THE   PRISONER 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO  •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  -    BOMBAY  -   CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


THE  PRISONER 


BY 

ALICE  BROWN 

AUTHOR  OF  "Mv  LOVK  AND  I,"  "CHILDREN  or 
EARTH,"  "RosE  MACLEOD,"  ETC. 


,*•  .  .,    »••*•"•»'?•%  (  A 


IFtew 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1916 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1916 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published   June,  1916 
Reprinted  June,   1916  July,   1916    Twice    August,  1916. 


THE  PRISONER 


There  could  not  have  been  a  more  sympathetic  moment 
for  coming  into  the  country  town  —  or,  more  accurately, 
the  inconsiderable  city  —  of  Addington  than  this  clear 
twilight  of  a  spring  day.  Anne  and  Lydia  French  with 
their  stepfather,  known  in  domestic  pleasantry  as  the 
colonel,  had  hit  upon  a  perfect  combination  of  time  and 
weather,  and  now  they  stood  in  a  dazed  silence,  dense  to 
the  proffers  of  two  hackmen  with  the  urgency  of  twenty, 
and  looked  about  them.  That  inquiring  pause  was  as  if 
they  had  expected  to  find,  even  at  the  bare,  sand-encircled 
station,  the  imagined  characteristics  of  the  place  they  had 
so  long  visualised.  The  handsome  elderly  man,  clean 
shaven,  close-clipped,  and,  at  intervals  when  he  recalled 
himself  to  a  stand  against  discouragement,  almost  military 
in  his  bearing,  was  tired,  but  entrenched  in  a  patient  calm. 
The  girls  were  profoundly  moved  in  a  way  that  looked  like 
gratitude:  perhaps,  too,  exalted  as  if,  after  reverses,  they 
had  reached  a  passionately  desired  goal.  Anne  was  the 
elder  sister,  slender  and  sweet,  grave  with  the  protective 
fostering  instinct  of  mothers  in  a  maidenly  hiding,  ready 
to  come  at  need.  She  wore  her  plain  blue  clothes  as  if 
unconscious  of  them  and  their  incomplete  response  to  the 
note  of  time.  A  woman  would  have  detected  that  she 
trimmed  her  own  hat,  a  flat,  wide-brimmed  straw  with  a 

formless  bow  and  a  feather  worthy  only  in  long  service. 

3 


PRISONER 

A  man  would  have  cherished  the  memory  of  her  thin  rose- 
flushed  face  with  the  crisp  touches  of  sedate  inquiry  about 
the  eyes.  "  Do  you  want  anything?  "  Anne's  eyes  were 
always  asking  clearly.  "  Let  me  get  it  for  you."  But 
even  a  man  thus  tenderly  alive  to  her  charm  would  have 
thought  her  older  than  she  was,  a  sweet  sisterly  creature 
to  be  reverentially  regarded. 

Lydia  was  the  product  of  a  different  mould.  She  was 
the  woman,  though  a  girl  in  years  and  look,  not  removed 
by  chill  timidities  from  woman's  normal  hopes,  the  clean 
animal  in  her  curved  mouth,  the  trick  of  parting  her  lips 
for  a  long  breath  because,  for  the  gusto  of  life,  the  ordi 
nary  breath  wouldn't  always  do,  and  showing  most  ex 
cellent  teeth,  the  little  square  chin,  dauntless  in  strength, 
the  eyes  dauntless,  too,  and  hair  all  a  brown  gloss  with  high 
lights  on  it,  very  free  about  her  forehead.  She  was  not 
so  tall  as  Anne,  but  graciously  formed  and  plumper. 
Curiously,  they  did  not  seem  racially  unlike  the  colonel 
who,  to  their  passionate  loyalties,  was  "  father  "  not  a 
line  removed.  In  the  delicacy  of  his  patrician  type  he 
might  even  have  been  "  grandfather  ",  for  he  looked  older 
than  he  was,  the  worsted  prey  of  circumstance.  He  had 
met  trouble  that  would  not  be  evaded,  and  if  he  might  be 
said  to  have  conquered,  it  was  only  from  regarding  it 
with  a  perplexed  immobility,  so  puzzling  was  it  in  a  world 
where  honour,  he  thought,  was  absolutely  defined  and  a 
social  crime  as  inexplicable  as  it  was  rending. 

And  while  the  three  wait  to  have  their  outlines  thus 
inadequately  sketched,  the  hackman  waits,  too,  he  of  a 
more  persistent  hope  than  his  fellows  who  have  gone  heavily 
rolling  away  to  the  stable,  it  being  now  six  o'clock  and 
this  the  last  train. 

Lydia  was  a  young  woman  of  fervid  recognitions.  She 
liked  to  take  a  day  and  stamp  it  for  her  own,  to  say  of 


THE  PRISONER  5 

this,  perhaps :  "  It  was  the  ninth  of  April  when  we  went  to 
Adding  ton,  and  it  was  a  heavenly  day.  There  was  a  clear 
sky  and  I  could  see  Farvie's  beautiful  nose  and  chin  against 
it  and  Anne's  feather  all  out  of  curl.  Dear  Anne!  dear 
Farvie!  Everything  smelled  of  dirt,  good,  honest  dirt, 
not  city  sculch,  and  I  heard  a  robin.  Anne  heard  him, 
too.  I  saw  her  smile."  But  really  what  Anne  plucked 
out  of  the  moment  was  a  blurred  feeling  of  peace.  The 
day  was  like  a  cool,  soft  cheek,  the  cheek  one  kisses  with 
calm  affection,  knowing  it  will  not  be  turned  away.  It  was 
she  who  first  became  aware  of  Denny,  the  hackman,  and 
said  to  him  in  her  liquid  voice  that  laid  bonds  of  kind 
responsiveness : 

"  Do  you  know  the  old  Blake  house?  " 

Denny  nodded.  He  was  a  soft,  loosely  made  man  with 
a  stubby  moustache  picked  out  in  red  and  a  cheerfully 
dishevelled  air  of  having  been  up  all  night. 

"  The  folks  moved  out  last  week,"  said  he.  "  You 
movin'  in  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  Lydia  supplied,  knowing  her  superior  capacity 
over  the  other  two,  for  meeting  the  average  man.  "  We're 
moving  in.  Farvie,  got  the  checks  ?  " 

Denny  accepted  the  checks  and,  in  a  neighbourly  fashion, 
helped  the  station  master  in  selecting  the  trunks,  no  large 
task  when  there  was  but  a  drummer's  case  besides.  He 
went  about  this  meditatively,  inwardly  searching  out  the 
way  of  putting  the  question  that  should  elicit  the  identity 
of  his  fares.  There  was  a  way,  he  knew.  But  they  had 
seated  themselves  in  the  hack,  and  now  explained  that  if 
he  would  take  two  trunks  along  the  rest  could  come  with 
the  freight  due  at  least  by  to-morrow ;  and  he  had  driven 
them  through  the  wide  street  bordered  with  elms  and  be 
hind  them  what  Addington  knew  as  "  house  and  grounds  " 
before  he  thought  of  a  way.  It  was  when  he  had  bumped 


6  THE  PRISONER 

the  trunks  into  the  empty  hall  and  Lydia  was  paying  him 
from  a  smart  purse  of  silver  given  her  by  her  dancing 
pupils  that  he  got  hold  of  his  inquisitorial  outfit. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Denny,  "  as  I  know  you  folks. 
Do  you  come  from  round  here?  " 

Lydia  smiled  at  him  pleasantly. 

"  Good  night,"  said  she.  "  Get  the  freight  round  in  the 
morning,  won't  you?  and  be  sure  you  bring  somebody  to 
help  open  the  crates." 

Then  Denny  climbed  sorrowfully  up  on  his  box,  and 
when  he  looked  round  he  found  them  staring  there  as  they 
had  stared  at  the  station:  only  now  he  saw  they  were  in  a 
row  and  "  holding  hands  ". 

"  I  think,"  said  Lydia,  in  rather  a  hushed  voice,  as  if 
she  told  the  others  a  pretty  secret,  "  it's  a  very  beautiful 
place." 

"You  girls  haven't  been  here,  have  you?"  asked  the 
colonel. 

"  No,"  said  Anne,  "  you'd  just  let  it  when  we  came  to 
live  with  you." 

Both  girls  used  that  delicate  shading  of  their  adoptive 
tie  with  him.  They  and  their  mother,  now  these  three 
years  dead,  had  "  come  to  live  with  "  him  when  they  were 
little  girls  and  their  mother  married  him.  They  never 
suggested  that  mother  married  him  any  time  within  their 
remembrance.  In  their  determined  state  of  mind  he  be 
longed  not  only  to  the  never-ending  end  when  he  and  they 
and  mother  were  to  meet  in  a  gardened  heaven  with  run 
ning  streams  and  bowery  trees,  but  as  well  to  the  vague 
past  when  they  were  little  girls.  Their  own  father  they 
had  memory  of  only  as  a  disturbing  large  person  in  rough 
tweed  smelling  of  office  smoke,  who  was  always  trying  to 
get  somewhere  before  the  domestic  exigencies  of  breakfast 
and  carriage  would  let  him,  and  who  dropped  dead  one  day 


THE  PRISONER  7 

trying  to  do  it.  Anne  saw  him  fall  right  in  the  middle  of 
the  gravel  walk,  and  ran  to  tell  mother  father  had  stubbed 
his  toe.  And  when  she  heard  mother  scream,  and  noted 
father's  really  humorous  obstinacy  about  getting  up,  and 
saw  the  cook  even  and  the  coachman  together  trying  to 
persuade  him,  she  got  a  strong  distaste  for  father;  and 
when  about  two  years  afterward  she  was  asked  if  she  would 
accept  this  other  older  father,  she  agreed  to  him  with 
cordial  expectation.  He  was  gentle  and  had  a  smooth, 
still  voice.  His  clothes  smelled  of  Russia  leather  and  lead 
pencils  and  at  first  of  very  nice  smoke:  not  as  if  he  had 
sat  in  a  tight  room  all  day  and  got  cured  in  the  smoke  of 
other  rank  pipes  like  a  helpless  ham,  but  as  if  a  pleasant 
acrid  perfume  were  his  special  atmosphere. 

"  They  haven't  done  much  to  the  garden,  have  they  ?  " 
he  asked  now,  poking  with  his  stick  in  the  beds  under  the 
windows.  "  I  suppose  you  girls  know  what  these  things 
are,  coming  up.  There's  a  peony.  I  do  know  that.  I 
remember  this  one.  It's  the  old  dark  kind,  not  pink.  I 
don't  much  care  for  a  pink  piny." 

The  big  front  yard  sloping  up  to  the  house  was  almost 
full  of  shrubbery  in  a  state  of  overgrown  prosperity. 
There  were  lilacs,  dark  with  buds,  and  what  Anne,  who 
was  devotedly  curious  in  matters  of  growing  life,  thought 
althea,  snowball  and  a  small-leaved  yellow  rose.  All  this 
runaway  shrubbery  looked,  in  a  way  of  speaking,  in- 
penetrable.  It  would  have  taken  so  much  trouble  to  get 
through  that  you  would  have  felt  indiscreet  in  trying  it. 
The  driveway  only  seemed  to  have  been  brave  enough  to 
pass  it  without  getting  choked  up,  a  road  that  came  in 
at  the  big  gateway,  its  posts  marked  by  haughty  granite 
balls,  accomplished  a  leisurely  curve  and  went  out  at  an 
other  similar  gateway  as  proudly  decorated.  The  house 
held  dignified  seclusion  there  behind  the  shrubbery,  wait- 


8  THE  PRISONER 

ing,  Lydia  thought,  to  be  found.  You  could  not  really 
see  it  from  the  street:  only  above  the  first  story  and 
blurred,  at  that,  by  rowan  trees.  But  the  two  girls  fac 
ing  it  there  at  near  range  and  the  colonel  with  the  charm 
of  old  affection  playing  upon  him  like  airs  of  paradise, 
thought  the  house  beautiful.  It  was  of  mellow  old  brick 
with  white  trimmings  and  a  white  door,  and  at  the  left, 
where  the  eastern  sun  would  beat,  a  white  veranda.  It 
came  up  into  a  kindly  gambrel  roof  and  there  were  dor 
mers.  Lydia  saw  already  how  fascinating  those  chambers 
must  be.  There  was  a  trellis  over  the  door  and  jessamine 
swinging  from  it.  The  birds  in  the  shrubbery  were  elo 
quent.  A  robin  mourned  on  one  complaining  note  and 
Anne,  wise  also  in  the  troubles  of  birds,  looked  low  for  the 
reason  and  found,  sitting  with  tail  wickedly  twitching  at 
the  tip,  a  brindled  cat.  Being  gentle  in  her  ways  and 
considering  that  all  things  have  rights,  she  approached 
him  with  crafty  steps  and  a  murmured  hypnotic,  "  kitty ! 
kitty ! "  got  her  hands  on  him,  and  carried  him  off  down 
the  drive,  to  drop  him  in  the  street  and  suggest,  with  a 
warning  pat  and  conciliating  stroke,  the  desirability  of 
home. 

The  colonel,  following  Lydia's  excited  interest,  poked 
with  his  stick  for  a  minute  or  more  at  a  bed  under  the 
front  window,  where  something  lush  seemed  to  be  coming 
up,  and  Lydia,  losing  interest  when  she  found  it  was  only 
pudding-bags,  picked  three  sprays  of  flowering  almond  for 
decorating  purposes  and  drew  him  toward  a  gate  at  the 
east  side  of  the  house  where,  down  three  rotting  steps, 
lay  level  land.  The  end  of  it  next  the  road  was  an  apple 
orchard  coming  into  an  amazingly  early  bloom,  a  small 
secluded  paradise.  A  high  brick  wall  shut  it  from  the 
road  and  ran  down  for  fifty  feet  or  so  between  it  and  the 
adjoining  place.  There  a  grey  board  fence  took  up  the 


THE  PRISONER  9 

boundary  and  ran  on,  with  a  less  definite  markedness  to  the 
eye,  until  it  skirted  a  rise  far  down  the  field  and  went  on 
over  the  rise  to  lands  unknown,  at  least  to  Lydia. 

"  Farvie,  come !  "  she  cried. 

She  pulled  him  down  the  crumbling  steps  to  the  soft 
sward  and  looked  about  her  with  a  little  murmured  note  of 
happy  expectation.  She  loved  the  place  at  once,  and  gave 
up  to  the  ecstasy  of  loving  it  "  good  and  hard,"  she  would 
have  said.  These  impulsive  passions  of  her  nature  had 
always  made  her  greatest  joys.  They  were  like  robust  be 
wildering  playmates.  She  took  them  to  her  heart,  and 
into  her  bed  at  night  to  help  her  dream.  There  was  noth 
ing  ever  more  warm  and  grateful  than  Lydia's  acceptances 
and  her  trust  in  the  bright  promise  of  the  new.  Anne 
didn't  do  that  kind  of  thing.  She  hesitated  at  thresholds 
and  looked  forward,  not  distrustfully  but  gravely,  into  dim 
interiors. 

"  Farvie,  dear,"  said  Lydia,  "  I  love  it  just  as  much  now 
as  I  could  in  a  hundred  years.  It's  our  house.  I  feel  as 
if  I'd  been  born  in  it." 

Farvie  looked  about  over  the  orchard,  under  its  foam 
of  white  and  pink ;  his  eyes  suffused  and  he  put  his  delicate 
lips  firmly  together.  But  all  he  said  was : 

"  They  haven't  kept  the  trees  very  well  pruned." 

"  There's  Anne,"  said  Lydia,  loosing  her  hold  of  his 
sleeve.  She  ran  light-footedly  back  to  Anne,  and  patted 
her  with  warm  receptiveness.  "  Anne,  look :  apple  trees, 
pear  trees,  peach  in  that  corner.  See  that  big  bush  down 
there." 

"  Quince,"  said  Anne  dreamily.  She  had  her  hat  off 
now,  and  her  fine  soft  brown  hair,  in  silky  disorder,  at 
tracted  her  absent-minded  care.  But  Lydia  had  pulled 
out  the  pin  of  her  own  tight  little  hat  with  its  backward 
pointing  quill  and  rumpled  her  hair  in  the  doing  and  never 


10  THE  PRISONER 

knew  it;  now  she  transfixed  the  hat  with  a  joyous  stab. 

"  Never  mind  your  hair,"  said  she.  "  What  idiots  we 
were  to  write  to  the  Inn.  Why  couldn't  we  stay  here 
to-night?  How  can  we  leave  it?  We  can't.  Did  you 
ever  see  such  a  darling  place?  Did  you  ever  imagine  a 
brick  wall  like  that?  Who  built  it,  Farvie?  Who  built 
the  brick  wall?" 

Farvie  was  standing  with  his  hands  behind  him,  thinking 
back,  the  girls  knew  well,  over  the  years.  A  mourn 
ful  quiet  was  in  his  face.  They  could  follow  for  a  little 
way  the  cause  of  his  sad  thoughts,  and  were  willing,  each 
in  her  own  degree  of  impulse,  to  block  him  in  it,  make  run 
ning  incursions  into  the  road,  twitch  him  by  the  coat  and 
cry,  "  Listen  to  us.  Talk  to  us.  You  can't  go  there 
where  you  were  going.  That's  the  road  to  hateful  mem 
ories.  Listen  to  that  bird  and  tell  us  about  the  brick 
wall." 

Farvie  was  used  to  their  invasions  of  his  mind.  He 
never  went  so  far  as  clearly  to  see  them  as  salutary  in 
vasions  to  keep  him  from  the  melancholy  accidents  of  the 
road,  an  ambulance  dashing  up  to  lift  his  bruised  hopes 
tenderly  and  take  them  off  somewhere  for  sanitary  treat 
ment,  or  even  some  childish  sympathy  of  theirs  commis 
sioned  to  run  up  and  offer  him  a  nosegay  to  distract  him  in 
his  walk  toward  old  disappointments  and  old  cares.  He 
only  knew  they  were  welcome  visitants  in  his  mind.  Some 
times  the  mind  seemed  to  him  a  clean-swept  place,  the 
shades  down  and  no  fire  lighted,  and  these  young  creatures, 
in  their  heavenly  implication  of  doing  everything  for  their 
own  pleasure  and  not  for  his,  would  come  in,  pull  up 
the  shades  with  a  rush,  light  the  fire  and  sit  down  with 
their  sewing  and  their  quite  as  necessary  laughter  by  the 
hearth. 

"  It's  a  nice  brick  wall,"  said  Anne,  in  her  cool  clear 


THE  PRISONER  11 

voice.  "  It  doesn't  seem  so  much  to  shut  other  people  out 
as  to  shut  us  in." 

She  slipped  her  hand  through  the  colonel's  arm,  and  they 
both  stood  there  at  his  elbow  like  rosy  champions,  bound 
to  stick  to  him  to  the  last,  and  the  bird  sang  and  something 
eased  up  in  his  mind.  He  seemed  to  be  let  off,  in  this 
spring  twilight,  from  an  exigent  task  that  had  shown 
no  signs  of  easing.  Yet  he  knew  he  was  not  really  let  off. 
Only  the  girls  were  throwing  their  glamour  of  youth  and 
hope  and  bravado  over  the  apprehensive  landscape  of  his 
fortune  as  to-morrow's  sun  would  snatch  a  rosier  light 
from  the  apple  blooms. 

"  My  great-grandfather  built  the  wall,"  said  he.  He 
was  content  to  go  back  to  an  older  reminiscent  time  when 
there  were,  for  him,  no  roads  of  gloom.  "  He  was  a  min 
ister,  you  know :  very  old-fashioned  even  then,  very  direct, 
knew  what  he  wanted,  saw  no  reason  why  he  shouldn't 
have  it.  He  wanted  a  place  to  meditate  in,  walk  up  and 
down,  think  out  his  sermons.  So  he  built  the  wall.  The 
townspeople  didn't  take  to  it  much  at  first,  father  used  to 
say.  But  they  got  accustomed  to  it.  He  wouldn't  care." 

"  There's  a  grape-vine  over  a  trellis,"  said  Anne  softly. 
She  spoke  in  a  rapt  way,  as  if  she  had  said,  "  There  are 
angels  choiring  under  the  trees.  We  can  hum  their 
songs." 

"  It  makes  an  arbour.  Farvie'll  sit  there  and  read  his 
Greek,"  said  Lydia.  "  We  can't  leave  this  place  to-night. 
It  would  be  ridiculous,  now  we've  found  it.  It  wouldn't 
be  safe  either.  Places  like  this  bust  up  and  blow  away." 

"  We  can  get  up  the  beds  to-morrow,"  said  Anne. 
"  Then  we  never'll  leave  it  for  a  single  minute  as  long  as 
we  live.  I  want  to  go  over  the  house.  Farvie,  can't  we  go 
over  the  house  ?  " 

They  went   up   the   rotten   steps,   Lydia   with   a   last 


12  THE  PRISONER 

proprietary  look  at  the  orchard,  as  if  she  sealed  it  safe 
from  all  the  spells  of  night,  and  entered  at  the  front  door, 
trying,  at  her  suggestion,  to  squeeze  in  together  three 
abreast,  so  they  could  own  it  equally.  It  was  a  still,  kind 
house.  The  last  light  lay  sweetly  in  the  room  at  the  right 
of  the  hall,  a  large  square  room  with  a  generous  fireplace 
well  blackened  and  large  surfaces  of  old  ivory  paint. 
There  was  a  landscape  paper  here,  of  trees  in  a  smoky  mist 
and  dull  blue  skies  behind  a  waft  of  cloud.  Out  of  this 
lay  the  dining-room,  all  in  green,  and  the  windows  of  both 
rooms  looked  on  a  gigantic  lilac  hedge,  and  beyond  it  the 
glimmer  of  a  white  colonial  house  set  back  in  its  own 
grounds.  The  kitchen  was  in  a  lean-to,  a  good  little 
kitchen  brown  with  smoke,  and  behind  that  was  the  shed 
with  dark  cobwebbed  rafters  and  corners  that  cried  out  for 
hoes  and  garden  tools.  Lydia  went  through  the  rooms  in 
a  rush  of  happiness,  Anne  in  a  still  rapt  imagining. 
Things  always  seemed  to  her  the  symbols  of  dearer  things. 
She  saw  shadowy  shapes  sitting  at  the  table  and  breaking 
bread  together,  saw  moving  figures  in  the  service  of  the 
house,  and  generations  upon  generations  weaving  their 
webs  of  hope  and  pain  and  disillusionment  and  hope  again. 
In  the  shed  they  stood  looking  out  at  the  back  door  through 
the  rolling  field,  where  at  last  a  fringe  of  feathery  yellow 
made  the  horizon  line. 

"  What's  at  the  end  of  the  field,  Farvie?  "  Lydia  asked. 

"  The  river,"  said  he.     "  Nothing  but  the  river." 

"  I  feel,"  said  she,  "  as  if  we  were  on  an  island  sur 
rounded  by  jumping-off  places:  the  bushes  in  front,  the 
lilac  hedge  on  the  west,  the  brick  wall  on  the  east,  the 
river  at  the  end.  Come,  let's  go  back.  We  haven't  seen 
the  other  two  rooms." 

These  wfere  the  northeast  room,  a  library  in  the  former 
time,  in  a  dim,  pink  paper  with  garlands,  and  the  srfuth- 


THE  PRISONER  13 

east  sitting-room,  in  a  modern  yet  conforming  paper  of 
dull  blue  and  grey. 

"  The  hall  is  grey,"  said  Lydia.  "  Do  you  notice  ? 
How  well  they've  kept  the  papers.  There  isn't  a  stain." 

"  Maiden  ladies,"  said  the  colonel,  with  a  sigh.  "  Noth 
ing  but  two  maiden  ladies  for  so  long." 

"  Don't  draw  long  breaths,  Farvie,"  said  Lydia. 
"  Anne  and  I  are  maiden  ladies.  You  wouldn't  breathe 
over  us.  We  should  feel  terribly  if  you  did." 

"  I  was  thinking  how  still  the  house  had  been,"  said  he. 
"  It  used  to  be  —  ah,  well !  well !  " 

"  They  grew  old  here,  didn't  they  ? "  said  Anne,  her 
mind  taking  the  maiden  ladies  into  its  hospitable  shelter. 

"  They  were  old  when  they  came."  He  was  trying  to 
put  on  a  brisker  air  to  match  these  two  runners  with  hope 
for  their  torch.  "  Old  as  I  am  now.  If  their  poor  little 
property  had  lasted  we  should  have  had  hard  work  to 
pry  them  out.  We  should  have  had  to  let  'em  potter  along 
here.  But  they  seem  to  like  their  nephew,  and  certainly 
he's  got  money  enough." 

"  They  adore  him,"  said  Lydia,  who  had  never  seen  them 
or  the  nephew.  "  And  they're  lying  in  gold  beds  at  this 
minute  eating  silver  cheese  off  an  emerald  plate  and  hear 
ing  the  nightingales  singing  and  saying  to  each  other, 
*  Oh,  my !  I  wish  it  was  morning  so  we  could  get  up  and 
put  on  our  pan-velvet  dresses  and  new  gold  shoes.' " 

This  effective  picture  Anne  and  the  colonel  received 
with  a  perfect  gravity,  not  really  seeing  it  with  the  mind's 
eye.  Lydia's  habit  of  speech  demanded  these  isolating 
calms. 

u  I  think,"  said  Anne,  "  we'd  better  be  getting  to  the 
Inn.  We  sha'n't  find  any  supper.  Lydia,  which  bag  did 
you  pack  our  nighties  in  ?  " 

Lydia  picked  out  the  bag,  carolling,  as  she  did  so,  in 


U  THE  PRISONER 

high  bright  notes,  and  then  remembered  that  she  had  to 
put  on  her  hat.  Anne  had  already  adjusted  hers  with  a 
careful  nicety. 

"You  know  where  the  Inn  is,  don't  you,  Farvie?" 
Lydia  was  asking,  as  they  stood  on  the  stone  step,  after 
Anne  had  locked  the  door,  and  gazed  about  them  in  an 
other  of  their  according  trances. 

He  smiled  at  them,  and  his  eyes  lighted  for  the  first 
time.  The  smile  showed  possibilities  the  girls  had  proven 
through  their  growing  up  years,  of  humour  and  childish 
fooling. 

"  Why,  yes,"  said  he,  "  it  was  here  when  I  was  born." 

They  went  down  the  curving  driveway  into  the  street 
which  the  two  girls  presently  found  to  be  the  state  street 
of  the  town.  The  houses,  each  with  abundant  grounds, 
had  all  a  formal  opulence  due  chiefly  to  the  white-pillared 
fronts.  Anne  grew  dreamy.  It  seemed  to  her  as  if  she 
were  walking  by  a  line  of  Greek  temples  in  an  afternoon 
hush.  The  colonel  was  naming  the  houses  as  they  passed, 
with  good  old  names.  Here  were  the  Jarvises,  here  the 
Russells,  and  here  the  Lockes. 

"  But  I  don't  know,"  said  he,  "  what's  become  of  them 
all." 

At  a  corner  by  a  mammoth  elm  he  turned  down  into  an 
other  street,  elm-shaded,  almost  as  wide,  and  led  them  to 
the  Inn,  a  long,  low-browed  structure  built  in  the  eight 
eenth  century  and  never  without  guests. 


n 

The  next  morning  brought  a  confusion  of  arriving 
freight,  and  Denny  was  supplicated  to  provide  workmen, 
clever  artificers  in  the  opening  of  boxes  and  the  setting 
up  of  beds.  HP  was  fired  by  a  zeal  not  all  curiosity,  a 
true  interest  assuaged  by  certainty  more  enlivening  yet. 

"  I  know  who  ye  be,"  he  announced  to  the  colonel. 
This  was  on  his  arrival  with  the  first  load.  "  I  ain't  lived 
in  town  very  long,  or  I  should  known  it  afore.  It's  in  the 
paper."  , 

Mr.  Blake  frowned  slightly  and  seemed  to  freeze  all  over 
the  surface  he  presented  to  the  world.  He  walked  away 
without  a  reply,  but  Lydia,  who  had  not  heard,  came  up 
at  this  point  to  ask  Denny  if  he  knew  where  she  could  find  a 
maid. 

"  Sure  I  do,"  said  Denny,  who  was  not  Irish  but  con 
sorted  with  common  speech.  "  My  wife;s  two  sisters, 
Mary  Nellen,  Prince  Edward  girls." 

"  We  don't  want  two,"  said  Lydia.  "  My  sister  and  I 
do  a  lot  of  the  work." 

"  The  two  of  them,"  said  Denny,  "  come  for  the  price 
of  one.  They're  studyin'  together  to  set  up  a  school  in 
Canada,  and  they  can't  be  separated.  They'd  admire  to 
be  with  nice  folks." 

"  Mary  ?  did  you  say  ?  "  asked  Lydia. 

"  Mary  Nellen." 

"Mary  and  Ellen?" 

"  Yes,  Mary  Nellen.     I'll  send  'em  up." 

That  afternoon  they  came,  pleasant-fa'ced  sduare  little 

15 


16  THE  PRISONER 

trudges  with  shiny  black  hair  and  round  myopic  eyes. 
This  near-sightedness  when  they  approached  the  unclassi 
fied,  resulted  in  their  simultaneously  making  up  the  most 
horrible  faces,  the  mere  effort  of  focusing.  Mary  Nellen 
—  for  family  affection,  recognising  their  complete  twin- 
ship,  always  blended  them  —  were  aware  of  this  disfigur 
ing  habit,  but  relegated  the  curing  of  it  to  the  day  of  their 
future  prosperity.  They  couldn't  afford  glasses  now, 
they  said.  They'd  rather  put  their  money  into  books. 
This  according  and  instantaneous  grimace  Lydia  found 
engaging.  She  could  not  possibly  help  hiring  them,  and 
they  appeared  again  that  night  with  two  battered  tin  boxes 
and  took  up  residence  in  the  shed  chamber. 

There  had  been  some  consultation  about  the  disposition 
of  chambers.  It  resolved  itself  into  the  perfectly  reason 
able  conclusion  that  the  colonel  must  have  the  one  he  had 
always  slept  in,  the  southeastern  corner. 

"  But  there's  one,"  said  Lydia,  "  that's  sweeter  than  the 
whole  house  put  together.  Have  you  fallen  in  love  with 
it,  Anne?  It's  that  low,  big  room  back  of  the  stairs.  You 
go  down  two  steps  into  it.  There's  a  grape-vine  over  the 
window.  Whose  chamber  is  that,  Farvie?  " 

He  stood  perfectly  still  by  the  mantel,  and  the  old  look 
of  introspective  pain,  almost  of  a  surprised  terror,  crossed 
his  face.  Then  they  knew.  But  he  delayed  only  a  min 
ute  or  so  in  answering. 

"  Why,"  said  he,  "  that  was  Jeff's  room  when  he  lived 
at  home." 

"  Then,"  said  Anne,  in  her  assuaging  voice,  "  he  must 
have  it  again." 

"  Yes,"  said  the  colonel.  "  I  think  you'd  better  plan 
it  that  way." 

They  said  no  more  about  the  room,  but  Anne  hunted 
out  a  set  of  Dickens  and  a  dog  picture  she  had  known  as 


THE  PRISONER  17 

belonging  to  Jeff,  who  was  the  own  son  of  the  colonel,  and 
took  them  in  there.  Once  she  caught  Lydia  in  the  door 
way  looking  in,  a  strangled  passion  in  her  face,  as  if  she 
were  going  back  to  the  page  of  an  old  grief. 

"  Queer,  isn't  it?  "  she  asked,  and  Anne,  knowing  all  that 
lay  in  the  elision,  nodded  silently. 

Once  that  afternoon  the  great  brass  knocker  on  the 
front  door  fell,  and  Mary  Nellen  answered  and  came  to 
Lydia  to  say  a  gentleman  was  there.  Should  he  be  asked 
in?  Mary  Nellen  seemed  to  have  an  impression  that  he 
was  mysteriously  not  the  sort  to  be  admitted.  Lydia 
went  at  once  to  the  door  whence  there  came  to  Anne, 
listening  with  a  worried  intensity,  a  subdued  runnel  of 
talk.  The  colonel,  who  had  sat  down  by  the  library 
window  with  a  book  he  was  not  reading,  as  if  he  needed  to 
soothe  some  inner  turmoil  of  his  own  by  the  touch  of 
leathern  covers,  apparently  did  not  hear  this  low-toned  in 
terchange.  He  glanced  into  the  orchard  from  time  to 
time,  and  once  drummed  on  the  window  when  a  dog  dashed 
across  and  ran  distractedly  back  and  forth  along  the  brick 
wall.  When  Anne  heard  the  front  door  close  she  met 
Lydia  in  the  hall. 

"Was  it?  "she  asked. 

Lydia  nodded.  Her  face  had  a  flush;  the  pupils  of 
her  eyes  were  large. 

"  Yes,"  said  she.  "  His  paper  wanted  to  know  whether 
Jeff  was  coming  here  and  who  was  to  meet  him.  I  said  I 
didn't  know." 

"  Did  he  ask  who  you  were  ?  " 

"  Yes.  I  told  him  I'd  nothing  to  say.  He  said  he  un 
derstood  Jeff's  father  was  here,  and  asked  if  he  might  see 
him.  I  said,  No,  he  couldn't  see  anybody." 

"  Was  he  put  out?  "  Anne  had  just  heard  Mary  Nel 
len  use  the  phrase.  Anne  thought  it  covered  a  good  deal. 


18  THE  PRISONER 

"No,"  said  Lydia.  She  lifted  her  plump  hands  and 
threaded  the  hair  back  from  her  forehead,  a  gesture  she 
had  when  she  was  tired.  It  seemed  to  spur  her  brain. 
"  No,"  she  repeated,  in  a  slow  thoughtfulness,  "  he  was  a 
kind  of  gentleman.  I  had  an  idea  he  was  sorry  for  me, 
for  us  all,  I  suppose.  I  was  sorry  for  him,  too.  He  was 
trying  to  earn  his  living  and  I  wouldn't  let  him." 

"  You  couldn't." 

"  No,"  said  Lydia,  rather  drearily,  "  I  couldn't.  Do 
you  think  Farvie  heard  ?  " 

"  I  think  not.     He  didn't  seem  to." 

But  it  was  with  redoubled  solicitude  that  they  threw 
their  joint  energies  into  making  supper  inviting,  so  that 
the  colonel  might  at  least  get  a  shred  of  easement  out  of 
a  pleasant  meal.  Mary  Nellen,  who  amicably  divided 
themselves  between  the  task  of  cooking  and  serving,  for 
warded  their  desires,  making  faces  all  the  time  at  unfa 
miliar  sauce-pans,  and  quite  plainly  agreed  with  them  that 
men  were  to  be  comforted  by  such  recognised  device. 
Anne  and  Lydia  were  deft  little  housewives.  They  had  a 
sober  recognition  of  the  pains  that  go  to  a  well-ordered 
life,  and  were  patient  in  service.  Their  father  had  no 
habit  of  complaint .  if  the  machinery  creaked  and  even 
caused  the  walls  to  shudder  with  faulty  action.  Yet  they 
knew  their  gentle  ways  contributed  to  his  peace. 

After  supper,  having  seen  that  he  was  seated  and  ready 
for  the  little  talk  they  usually  had  in  the  edge  of  the 
evening,  Lydia  wondered  whether  she  ought  to  tell  him 
a  reporter  had  run  them  down ;  but  while  she  balanced  the 
question  there  came  another  clanging  knock  and  Mary 
Nellen  beckoned  her.  This  one  was  of  another  stamp. 
He  had  to  get  his  story,  and  he  had  overborne  Mary  Nellen 
and  penetrated  to  the  hall.  Lydia  could  hear  the  young 
inexorable  voice  curtly  talking  down  Mary  Nellen  and  she 


THE  PRISONER  19 

closed  the  library  door  behind  her.  But  when  the  front 
door  had  shut  after  the  invader  and  Lydia  came  back, 
again  with  reddened  cheeks  and  distended  eyes,  the  colonel 
went  to  it  and  shot  the  bolt. 

"  That's  enough  for  to-night,"  said  he.  "  The  next  I'll 
see,  but  not  till  morning." 

"  You  know  we  all  thought  it  best  you  shouldn't,"  Anne 
said,  always  faintly  interrogative.  "  So  long  as  we  needn't 
say  who  we  are.  They'd  know  who  you  were." 

"  His  father,"  said  Lydia,  from  an  indignation  dispro- 
portioned  to  the  mild  sadness  she  saw  in  the  colonel's  face. 
"  That's  what  they'd  say :  his  father.  I  don't  believe  Anne 
and  I  could  bear  that,  the  way  they'd  say  it.  I  don't  be 
lieve  Jeff  could  either." 

The  colonel  had,  even  in  his  familiar  talk  with  them, 
a  manner  of  old-fashioned  courtesy. 

"  I  didn't  think  it  mattered  much  myself  who  saw  them," 
he  said,  "  when  you  proposed  it.  But  now  it  has  actually 
happened  I  see  it's  very  unfitting  for  you  to  do  it,  very  un 
fitting.  However,  I  don't  believe  we  shall  be  troubled 
again  to-night." 

But  their  peace  had  been  broken.  They  felt  irration 
ally  like  ill-defended  creatures  in  a  state  of  siege.  The 
pretty  wall-paper  didn't  help  them  out,  nor  any  conscious 
ness  of  the  blossoming  orchard  in  the  chill  spring  air. 
The  colonel  noted  the  depression  in  his  two  defenders  and, 
by  a  spurious  cheerfulness,  tried  to  bring  them  back  to  the 
warmer  intimacies  of  retrospect. 

"  It  was  in  this  very  room,"  he  said,  "  that  I  saw  your 
dear  mother  first." 

Lydia  looked  up,  brightly  ready  for  diversion.  Anne 
sat,  her  head  bent  a  little,  responsive  to  the  intention  of 
his  speech. 

"  I  was   sitting  here,"  said  he,  "  alone.     I  had,  I  am 


20  THE  PRISONER 

pretty  sure,  this  very  book  in  my  hand.  I  wasn't  reading 
it.  I  couldn't  read.  The  maid  came  in  and  told  me  a 
lady  wanted  to  see  me." 

"  What  time  of  the  day  was  it,  Farvie?  "  Lydia  asked, 
with  her  eager  sympathy. 

"  It  was  the  late  afternoon,"  said  he.  "  In  the  early 
spring.  Perhaps  it  was  a  day  like  this.  I  don't  remem 
ber.  Well,  I  had  her  come  in.  Before  I  knew  where  I 
was,  there  she  stood,  about  there,  in  the  middle  of  the 
floor.  You  know  how  she  looked." 

"  She  looked  like  Lydia,"  said  Anne.  It  was  not  jeal 
ousy  in  her  voice,  only  yearning.  It  seemed  very  desirable 
to  look  like  Lydia  or  their  mother. 

"  She  was  much  older,"  said  the  colonel.  "  She  looked 
very  worried  indeed.  I  remember  what  she  said,  remem 
ber  every  word  of  it.  She  said,  4  Mr.  Blake,  I'm  a  widow, 
you  know.  And  I've  got  two  little  girls.  What  am  I  go 
ing  to  do  with  them  ?  ' 

"  She  did  the  best  thing  anybody  could,"  said  Lydia. 
"  She  gave  us  to  you." 

"  I  have  an  idea  I  cried,"  said  the  colonel.  "  Really  I 
know  I  did.  And  it  broke  her  all  up.  She'd  come  some 
how  expecting  Jeff's  father  to  account  for  the  whole  busi 
ness  and  assure  her  there  might  be  a  few  cents  left.  But 
when  she  saw  me  dribbling  like  a  seal,  she  just  ran  for 
ward  and  put  her  arms  round  me.  And  she  said,  4  My 
dear !  my  dear ! '  I  hear  her  now." 

"  So  do  I,"  said  Anne,  in  her  low  tone.     "  So  do  I." 

"  And  you  never'd  seen  each  other  before,"  said  Lydia, 
in  an  ecstasy  of  youthful  love  for  love.  "  I  call  that 
great."  , 

"  We  were  married  in  a  week,"  said  the  colonel.  "  She'd 
come  to  ask  me  to  help  her,  do  you  see?  but  she  found  I 
was  the  one  that  needed  help.  And  I  had  an  idea  I  might 


THE  PRISONER  21 

do  something  for  her  by  taking  the  responsibility  of  her 
two  little  girls.  But  it  was  no  use  pretending.  I  didn't 
marry  her  for  anything  except,  once  I'd  seen  her,  I 
couldn't  live  without  her." 

"  Wasn't  mother  darling ! "  Lydia  threw  at  him,  in  a 
passionate  sympathy. 

"  You're  like  her,  Lydia,"  said  Anne  again. 

But  Lydia  shook  her  head. 

"  I  couldn't  hold  a  candle  to  mother,"  said  she.  "  My 
eyes  may  be  like  hers.  So  is  my  forehead.  So's  my 
mouth.  But  I'm  no  more  like  mother  — " 

"  It  was  her  sympathy,"  said  their  father  quietly,  seem 
ing  to  have  settled  it  all  a  long  time  before.  "  She  was  the 
most  absolutely  loving  person.  You  girls  may  be  like  her 
in  that,  too.  I'm  sure  you're  inconceivably  good  to  me." 

"  I'd  like  to  love  people  to  death,"  said  Lydia,  with  the 
fierceness  of  passion  not  yet  named  and  recognised,  but 
putting  up  its  beautiful  head  now  and  then  to  look  her  re- 
mindingly  in  the  eyes.  "  I'd  like  to  love  everybody.  You 
first,  Farvie,  you  and  Anne.  And  Jeff.  I'm  going  to 
love  Jeff  like  a  house-a-fire.  He  doesn't  know  what  it  is 
to  have  a  sister.  When  he  comes  in  I'm  going  to  run  up 
to  him  as  if  I  couldn't  wait  to  get  him  into  the  room, 
and  kiss  him  and  say,  *  Here  we  are,  Jeff.  I'm  Lyddy. 
Here's  Anne.'  You  kiss  him,  too,  Anne." 

"  Why,"  said  Anne  softly,  "  I  wonder." 

"  You  needn't  stop  to  wonder,"  said  Lydia.  "  You  do 
it.  He's  going  to  realise  he's  got  sisters  anyway  —  and 
a  father." 

The  same  thought  sprang  at  once  into  their  three  minds. 
It  was  not  uncommon.  They  lived  so  close  together,  in 
such  a  unison  of  interests,  that  their  minds  often  beat 
accordingly.  Anne  hesitatingly  voiced  the  question, 

"  Do  you  think  Esthcr'll  meet  him?  " 


22  THE  PRISONER 

"  Impossible  to  say,"  the  colonel  returned,  and  Lydia's 
nipped  lips  and  warlike  glance  indicated  that  she  found  it 
hideously  impossible  to  say. 

"  I  intend  to  find  out,"  said  she. 

"  I  have  an  idea,"  said  her  father,  as  if  he  were  in  the 
kindest  manner  heading  her  off  from  a  useless  project, 
"  that  I'd  better  make  a  call  on  her  myself,  perhaps  at 
once." 

"  She  wouldn't  see  you  when  you  came  before,"  Lydia 
reminded  him,  in  a  hot  rebellion  against  Jeff's  wife  who 
had  not  stood  by  him  in  his  downfall.  In  the  space  of 
time  that  he  had  been  outside  the  line  of  civilised  life,  an 
ideal  of  Jeff  had  been  growing  up  in  her  own  mind  as 
in  Anne's.  They  saw  him  as  the  wronged  young  cheva 
lier  without  reproach  whom  a  woman  had  forsaken  in  his 
need.  Only  a  transcript  of  their  girlish  dreams  could 
have  told  them  what  they  thought  of  Jeff.  His  father's 
desolation  without  him,  the  crumbling  of  his  father's  life 
from  hale  middle  age  to  fragile  eld,  this  whirling  of  the 
leaves  of  time  had  seemed  to  bring  them  to  a  blazoned  page 
where  Jeff's  rehabilitation  should  be  wrought  out  in  a 
magnificent  sequence.  The  finish  to  that  volume  only: 
Jeff's  life  would  begin  again  in  the  second  volume,  to  be 
annotated  with  the  approbation  of  his  fellows.  He  would 
be  lifted  on  the  hands  of  men,  their  plaudits  would  up 
bear  his  soul,  and  he  would  at  last  triumph,  sealed  by  the 
sanction  of  his  kind.  They  grew  intoxicated  over  it  some 
times,  in  warm  talks  when  their  father  was  not  there. 
He  talked  very  little:  a  few  words  now  and  then  to  show 
what  he  thought  of  Jeff,  a  phrase  or  two  where  he  uncon 
sciously  turned  for  them  the  page  of  the  past  and  ex 
plained  obscurities  in  the  text  they  couldn't  possibly  eluci 
date  alone  —  these  they  treasured  and  made  much  of,  as 


THE  PRISONER  23 

the  antiquary  interprets  his  stone  language.  He  never 
knew  what  importance  they  laid  on  every  shred  of  evidence 
about  Jeff.  Perhaps  if  he  had  known  he  would  have  given 
them  clearer  expositions.  To  him  Jeff  was  the  dearest  of 
sons  that  ever  man  begot,  strangely  pursued  by  a  malign 
destiny  accomplished  only  through  the  very  chivalry  and 
softness  of  the  boy's  nature.  No  hero,  though ;  he  would 
never  have  allowed  his  girls  to  build  on  that.  And  in 
all  this  rehabilitation  of  Jeff,  as  the  girls  saw  it,  there 
was  one  dark  figure  like  the  black-clad  mourner  at  the 
grave  who  seems  to  deny  the  tenet  of  immortality:  his 
wife,  who  had  not  stood  by  him  and  who  was  living  here 
in  Addington  with  her  grandmother,  had  insisted  on  living 
with  grandmother,  in  fact,  as  a  cloak  for  her  hardness. 
Sometimes  they  felt  if  they  could  sweep  the  black-clad 
figure  away  from  the  grave  of  Jeff's  hopes,  Jeff,  in  glori 
ous  apotheosis,  would  rise  again. 

"What  a  name  for  her  —  Esther!"  Lydia  ejaculated, 
with  an  intensity  of  hatred  Anne  tried  to  waft  away  by  a 
little  qualifying  murmur.  "  Esther !  Esthers  are  all 
gentle  and  humble  and  beautiful." 

"  She  is  a  very  pretty  woman,"  said  her  father,  with 
a  wise  gentleness  of  his  own.  Lydia  often  saw  him  holding 
the  balance  for  her  intemperate  judgments,  his  grain  of 
gold  forever  equalising  her  dross.  "  I  think  she'd  be 
called  a  beautiful  woman.  Jeff  thought  she  was." 

"  Do  you  actually  believe,  Farvie,"  said  Lydia,  "  that 
she  hasn't  been  to  see  him  once  in  all  these  hideous  years?  " 

"  I  know  it,"  said  he.  "  However,  we  mustn't  blame 
her.  She  may  be  a  timid  woman.  We  must  stand  by  her 
and  encourage  her  and  make  it  easier  for  her  to  meet  him 
now.  Jeff  was  very  much  in  love  with  her.  He'll  under 
stand  her  better  than  we  do." 


24  THE  PRISONER 

"  I  don't  understand  her  at  all,"  said  Lydia,  "  unless 
you're  going  to  let  us  say  she's  selfish  and  a  traitor 
and  — " 

"No,  no,"  said  Anne.  "  We  don't  know  her.  We 
haven't  even  seen  her.  We  must  do  what  Farvie  says,  and 
then  what  Jeff  says.  I  feel  as  if  Jeff  had  thought  things 
out  a  lot." 

"  Yes,"  said  Lydia,  and  bit  her  lip  on  the  implied  reason 
that  he'd  had  plenty  of  time. 

66  Yes,"  said  the  colonel  gravely,  in  his  own  way.  "  I'd 
better  go  over  there  early  to-morrow  afternoon.  Before 
the  reporters  get  at  her." 

"  Maybe  they've  done  it  already,"  Lydia  suggested, 
and  the  gravity  of  his  face  accorded  in  the  fear  that  it 
might  be  so. 

Lydia  felt  no  fear:  a  fiery  exultation,  rather.  She  saw 
no  reason  why  Esther  should  be  spared  her  share  of  in 
vasion,  except,  indeed,  as  it  might  add  to  the  publicity 
of  the  thing. 

"  You'll  tell  her,  Farvie,"  Anne  hesitated,  "just  what 
we'd  decided  to  do  about  his  coming  —  about  meeting 
him?" 

"  Yes,"  said  he.  "  In  fact,  I  should  consult  her.  She 
must  have  thought  out  things  for  herself,  just  as  he  must. 
I  should  tell  her  he  particularly  asked  us  not  to  meet  him. 
But  I  don't  think  that  would  apply  to  her.  I  think  it 
would  be  a  beautiful  thing  for  her  to  do.  If  reporters 
are  there  — " 

"  They  will  be,"  Lydia  interjected  savagely. 

"  Well,  if  they  are,  it  wouldn't  be  a  bad  thing  for 
them  to  report  that  his  wife  was  waiting  for  him.  It  would 
be  right  and  simple  and  beautiful.  But  if  she  doesn't  meet 
him,  certainly  we  can't.  That  would  give  rise  to  all  kinds 
of  publicity  and  pain.  I  think  she'll  see  that." 


THE  PRISONER  25 

"  I  don't  think  she'll  see  anything,"  said  Lydia.     "  She's 

got  a  heart  like  a  stone." 

"  Oh,  don't  say  that,"  Anne  besought  her,  "  in  advance." 
"  It  isn't  in  advance,"  said  Lydia.     "  It's  after  all  these 

years." 


Ill 

The  next  day,  after  an  early  dinner  —  nobody  in  Ad- 
dington  dined  at  night  —  the  colonel,  though  not  sitting 
down  to  a  definite  conclave,  went  over  with  Anne  and  Lydia 
every  step  of  his  proposed  call  on  Esther,  as  if  they  were 
planning  a  difficult  route  and  a  diplomatic  mission  at  the 
end,  and  later,  in  a  state  of  even  more  exquisite  personal 
fitness  than  usual,  the  call  being  virtually  one  of  state, 
he  set  off  to  find  his  daughter-in-law.  Anne  and  Lydia 
walked  with  him  down  the  drive.  They  had  the  air  of  up 
holding  him  to  the  last. 

The  way  to  Esther's  house,  which  was  really  her  grand 
mother's,  he  had  trodden  through  all  his  earlier  life.  His 
own  family  and  Esther's  had  been  neighbours  intimately 
at  one,  and,  turning  the  familiar  corner,  he  felt,  with  a 
poignancy  cruel  in  its  force,  youth  recalled  and  age  con 
firmed.  Here  were  associations  almost  living,  they  were 
so  vivid,  yet  wraithlike  in  sheer  removedness.  It  was  all 
very  subtle,  in  its  equal-sided  force,  this  resurrection  of  the 
forms  of  youth,  to  be  met  by  the  cold  welcome  of  a  change 
in  him.  The  heart  did  quicken  over  its  recognition  of 
the  stability  of  things,  but  with  no  robust  urge  such  as  it 
knew  in  other  years  ;  indeed  it  fluttered  rather  pathetically, 
as  if  it  begged  him  to  put  no  unwonted  strain  upon  it 
now,  as  in  that  time  foregone,  when  every  beat  cried  out, 
"  Heave  the  weight !  charge  up  the  hill !  We're  equal  to 
it.  If  we're  not,  we'll  die  submerged  in  our  own  red 
fount."  He  was  not  taking  age  with  any  sense  of  egotis 
tical  rebellion;  but  it  irked  him  like  an  unfamiliar  weight 
patiently  borne  and  for  no  reward.  The  sense  of  the 

26 


THE  PRISONER  27 

morning  of  life  was  upon  him ;  yet  here  he  was  fettered  to 
his  traitorous  body  which  was  surely  going  to  betray  him 
in  the  end.  No  miracle  could  save  him  from  atomic  down 
fall.  However  exultantly  he  might  live  again,  here  he 
should  live  no  more,  and  though  there  was  in  him  no  fer 
vency  either  of  rebellion  or  belief,  he  did  look  gravely 
now  at  the  pack  of  mortality  he  carried.  It  was  carefully 
poised  and  handled.  His  life  was  precious  to  him,  for  he 
wanted  this  present  coil  of  circumstance  made  plain  be 
fore  he  should  go  hence  and  be  seen  no  more. 

The  streets  just  now  were  empty.  It  was  an  hour  of 
mid-afternoon  when  ladies  had  not  dawned,  in  calling 
raiment,  upon  a  world  of  other  expectant  ladies,  and  when 
the  business  man  is  under  bonds  to  keep  sequestered  with 
at  least  the  pretext  of  arduous  tasks.  The  colonel  had 
ample  opportunity  to  linger  by  yards  where  shrubbery  was 
coming  out  in  shining  buds,  and  draw  into  his  grave  con 
sciousness  the  sense  of  spring.  Every  house  had  associa 
tions  for  him,  as  every  foot  of  the  road.  Now  he  was 
passing  the  great  yellow  mansion  where  James  Reardon 
lived.  Reardon,  of  Irish  blood  and  American  public 
school  training,  had  been  Jeffrey's  intimate,  the  sophis 
ticated  elder  who  had  shown  him,  with  a  cool  practicality 
that  challenged  emulation,  the  world  and  how  it  was  to  be 
bought.  When  there  were  magnates  in  Addington,  James 
had  been  a  poor  boy.  There  were  still  magnates,  and  now 
he  was  one  of  them,  so  far  as  club  life  went  and  monetary 
transactions.  He  had  never  tried  to  marry  an  Adding 
ton  girl,  and  therefore  could  not  be  said  to  have  put  his 
social  merit  absolutely  to  the  touch.  But  luck  had  always 
served  him.  Perhaps  it  would  even  have  done  it  there. 
He  had  gone  into  a  broker's  office,  had  made  a  strike  with 
his  savings  and  then  another  with  no  warning  reversal,  and 
got  the  gay  habit  of  rolling  up  money  like  a  snowball  on 


28  THE  PRISONER 

a  damp  day.  When  the  ball  got  too  heavy  for  him  to 
handle  deftly,  Jim  dropped  the  game,  only  starting  the 
ball  down  hill  —  if  one  may  find  symbolism  for  sedate  in 
vestments  —  gathering  weight  as  it  went  and,  it  was 
thought,  at  obstructive  points  persuading  other  little  boys 
to  push.  The  colonel  had  often  wondered  if  Jeffrey  had 
been  one  of  those  little  boys.  Now,  at  forty-five,  Reardon 
lived  a  quiet,  pottering  life,  a  bachelor  with  a  housekeeper 
and  servants  enough  to  keep  the  big  yellow  house  in  form. 
He  read  in  a  methodical  way,  really  the  same  books  over 
and  over,  collected  prints  with  a  conviction  that  a  print 
is  a  print,  exercised  his  big  frame  in  the  club  gymnasium, 
took  a  walk  of  sanitary  length  morning  and  afternoon  and 
went  abroad  once  in  two  years. 

"  I've  got  money  enough,"  he  was  accustomed  to  say, 
when  the  adventurous  petitioned  him  to  bolster  new  proj 
ects  for  swift  returns,  *'  all  in  gilt-edged  securities. 
That's  why  I  don't  propose  to  lay  awake  an  hour  in  my 
life,  muddling  over  stocks.  Why,  it's  destruction,  man! 
it's  death.  It  eats  up  your  tissues  faster  than  old  age." 
The  eccentricity  of  his  verb  indicated  only  the  perfection 
of  his  tact.  He  had  a  perfect  command  of  the  English 
language,  but  a  wilful  lapse  into  colloquialisms  endeared 
him,  he  knew,  to  his  rougher  kind.  There  was  no  more 
popular  man.  He  was  blond  and  open-featured.  He 
spoke  in  a  loud  yet  always  sympathetic  voice,  and  in  skil 
fully  different  fashions  he  called  every  man  brother. 

Yet  the  colonel,  his  fancy  entering  the  seclusion  of  the 
yellow  house,  rich  in  books  that  would  have  been  sealed  to 
even  Jim's  immediate  forebears,  rich  in  all  possible  me 
chanical  appliances  for  the  ease  of  life,  speculated  whether 
Reardon  had,  in  the  old  days,  been  good  for  Jeff.  Could 
he,  with  his  infernal  luck,  have  been  good  for  any  youth  of 
Jeff's  impetuous  credulity?  Mightn't  Jeff  have  got  the 


THE  PRISONER  29 

idea  that  life  is  an  easy  job?  The  colonel  felt  now  that 
he  had  always  distrusted  Reardon's  bluff  bonhomie,  his 
sympathetic  voice,  his  booming  implication  lhat  he  was  let 
ting  you  into  his  absolutely  habitable  heart.  He  knew, 
too,  that  without  word  of  his  own  his  distrust  had  filtered 
out  to  Anne  and  Lydia,  and  that  they  were  prepared,  while 
they  stood  by  Jeff  to  unformulated  issues,  to  trip  up  Rear- 
don,  somehow  bring  him  low  and  set  Jeff  up  impeccable. 
Of  this  Tie  was  thinking  gravely  now,  the  different  points 
of  it  starting  up  in  his  mind  like  sparks  of  light  while  he 
regarded  Reardon's  neat  shrubs  healthily  growing,  as  if 
the  last  drop  of  fertilising  had  been  poured  into  them  at 
this  spring  awakening,  and  all  pruned  to  a  wholesome  sym 
metry.  Then,  hearing  the  sound  of  a  door  and  painfully 
averse  to  meeting  Reardon,  he  went  on  and  mounted  the 
steps  of  the  great  brick  house  where  his  daughter-in-law 
lived.  And  here  the  adventure  came  to  an  abrupt  stop. 
The  maid,  perfectly  courteous  and  yet  with  an  air  of  readi 
ness  even  he,  the  most  unsuspecting  of  men,  could  not  fail 
to  recognise,  told  him,  almost  before  he  had  finished  his  in 
quiry,  that  Mrs.  Blake  was  not  at  home.  She  would  not  be 
at  home  that  afternoon.  No,  sir,  not  the  next  day.  Madam 
Bell,  Esther's  grandmother,  he  asked  for  then.  No,  sir, 
she  was  not  at  home.  Looking  in  the  smooth  sanguine 
face  of  the  girl,  noting  mechanically  her  light  eyelashes 
and  the  spaces  between  her  teeth,  he  knew  she  lied.  Yet 
he  was  a  courteous  gentleman,  and  did  not  report  that  to 
his  inner  mind.  He  bestowed  his  card  upon  Sapphira,  and 
walked  away  at  his  sedate  pace,  more  than  anything  puz 
zled.  Esther  was  not  proposing  to  take  part  in  their  com 
ing  drama.  He  couldn't  count  on  her.  He  was  doubly 
sorry  because  this  defection  was  going  to  make  Anne  and 
Lydia  hate  her  more  than  ever,  and  he  was  averse  to  the 
intensification  of  hatred.  He  was  no  mollycoddle,  but  he 


30  THE  PRISONER 

had  an  intuition  that  hatred  is  of  no  use.     It  hindered 
things,  all  sorts  of  things :  kindliness,  even  justice. 

The  girls  were  waiting  for  him  at  the  door,  but  reading 
his  face,  they  seemed,  while  not  withdrawing  themselves 
bodily,  really  to  slip  away,  in  order  not  even  tacitly  to 
question  him.  They  had  a  marvellous  unwillingness  to 
bring  a  man  to  the  bar.  There  was  no  over-tactful  dis 
play  of  absence,  but  their  minds  simply  would  not  set  upon 
and  interrogate  his,  nor  skulk  round  corners  to  spy  upon 
it.  But  he  had  to  tell  them,  and  he  was  anxious  to  get  it 
over.  Just  as  they  seemed  now  about  to  melt  away  to  ur 
gent  tasks,  he  called  them  back. 
"  She's  not  at  home,"  said  he. 

Anne  looked  a  species  of  defeated  interest.  Lydia's 
eyes  said  unmistakably,  "  I  don't  believe  it."  The  colonel 
was  tired  enough  to  want  to  say,  "  I  don't  either,"  but  he 
never  felt  at  liberty  to  encourage  Lydia's  too  exuberant 
candour. 

"  She's  not  to  be  at  home  to-morrow,"  he  said.     "  It 
looks  as  if  she'd  gone  for  —  for  the  present,"  he  ended 
lamely,  put  down  his  hat  and  went  into  the  east  room  and 
took  up  his  brown  book. 
"  Oh !  "  said  Lydia. 

That  was  all  he  was  to  hear  from  her,  and  he  was  glad. 
He  hadn't  any  assurance  within  him  of  the  force  to 
assuage  an  indignation  he  understood  though  he  couldn't 
feel  it.  That  was  another  of  the  levelling  powers  of  age. 
You  couldn't  key  your  emotions  up  to  the  point  where 
they  might  shatter  something  or  perhaps  really  do  some 
good.  It  wasn't  only  that  you  hadn't  the  blood  and 
breath.  It  also  didn't  seem  worth  while.  He  was  angry, 
in  a  measure,  with  the  hidden  woman  he  couldn't  get  at  to 
bid  her  come  and  help  him  fight  the  battle  that  was  hers 
even  more  indubitably  than  his ;  yet  he  was  conscious  that 


THE  PRISONER  31 

behind  her  defences  was  another  world  of  passion  and 
emotion  and  terribly  strong  desires,  as  valid  as  his  own. 
She  had  her  side.  He  didn't  know  what  it  was.  He 
wanted  really  to  avoid  knowing,  lest  it  weaken  him  through 
its  appeal  for  a  new  sympathy ;  but  he  knew  the  side  was 
there.  This,  he  said  to  himself,  wTith  a  half  smile,  was 
probably  known  as  tolerance.  It  seemed  to  him  old  age. 

So,  from  their  benign  choice,  he  had  really  nothing  to 
say  to  Lydia  or  Anne.  In  the  late  afternoon  Anne  asked 
him  to  go  to  walk  and  show  her  the  town,  and  he  put 
her  off.  He  was  conscious  of  having  drowsed  away  in  his 
chair,  into  one  of  those  intervals  he  found  so  inevitable, 
and  that  were,  at  the  same  time,  so  irritatingly  foreign 
to  his  previous  habits  of  life.  He  did  not  drop  his  pur 
suits  definitely  to  take  a  nap.  The  nap  seemed  to  take 
him,  even  when  he  was  on  the  margin  of  some  lake  or  river 
where  he  thought  himself  well  occupied  in  seeing  the  mov 
ing  to  and  fro  of  boats,  for  business  and  pleasure,  just  as 
his  own  boat  had  gallantly  cut  invisible  paths  on  the  air 
and  water  in  those  earlier  years.  The  nap  would  steal 
upon  him  like  an  amiable  yet  inexorable  joker,  and  throw  a 
cloudy  veil  over  his  brain  and  eyes,  and  he  would  sink  into 
a  gulf  he  had  not  perceived.  It  lay  at  his  feet,  and  some 
thing  was  always  ready  to  push  him  into  it.  He  thought 
sometimes,  wondering  at  the  inevitableness  of  it,  that  one 
day  the  veil  would  prove  a  pall. 

But  after  their  twilight  supper,  he  felt  more  in  key  with 
the  tangible  world,  and  announced  himself  as  ready  to  set 
forth.  Lydia  refused  to  go.  She  had  something  to  do, 
she  said ;  but  she  walked  down  the  driveway  with  them,  and 
waited  until  they  had  gone  a  rod  or  two  along  the  street. 
The  colonel  turned  away  from  Esther's  house,  as  Lydia 
knew  he  would.  She  had  not  watched  him  for  years  with 
out  seeing  how  resolutely  he  put  the  memory  of  pain  or 


32  THE  PRISONER 

loss  behind  him  whenever  manly  honour  would  allow.  The 
colonel's  thin  skin  was  his  curse.  Yet  he  wore  it  with  a 
proud  indifference  it  took  a  good  deal  of  warm  affection  to 
penetrate.  Lydia  stood  there  and  looked  up  and  down  the 
street.  It  had  been  a  day  almost  hot,  surprising  for  the 
season,  and  she  was  dressed  in  conformity  in  some  kind  of 
thin  stuff  with  little  dots  of  black.  Her  round  young  arms 
were  bare  to  the  elbow,  and  there  was  a  narrow  lacy  frill 
about  her  neck.  It  was  too  warm  really  to  need  a  hat  or 
jacket,  and  this  place  was  informal  enough,  she  thought, 
to  do  away  with  gloves.  Having  rapidly  decided  that 
it  was  also  a  pity  to  cool  resolution  by  returning  to  the 
house  for  any  conventional  trappings,  she  stepped  to  the 
pavement  and  went,  with  a  light  rapidity,  along  the  road 
to  Esther's. 

She  knew  the  way.  When  she  reached  the  house  she 
regarded  it  for  a  moment  from  the  opposite  side  of  the 
street,  and  Jim  Reardon,  coming  out  of  his  own  gate  for 
his  evening's  stroll  to  the  Colonial  Club,  saw  her  and 
crossed,  instead  of  continuing  on  his  own  side  as  he  or 
dinarily  did.  She  was  a  nymph-like  vision  of  the  twilight, 
and  there  was  nothing  of  the  Addington  girl  about  her  un- 
considered  ease.  Jim  looked  at  her  deferentially,  as  he 
passed,  a  hand  ready  for  his  hat.  But  though  Lydia 
saw  him  she  dismissed  him  as  quickly,  perhaps  as  no  mat 
ter  for  wonderment,  and  again  because  her  mind  was  full 
of  Esther.  Now  in  the  haste  that  dares  not  linger,  she 
crossed  the  street  and  ascended  the  steps  of  the  brick 
house.  As  she  did  so  she  was  conscious  of  the  stillness 
within.  It  might  have  been  a  house  embodied  out  of  her 
own  dreams.  But  she  did  not  ring,  nor  did  she  touch  the 
circlet  the  brass  lion  of  a  knocker  held  obligingly  in  his 
mouth.  She  lifted  the  heavy  latch,  stepped  in  and  shut 
the  door  behind  her. 


THE  PRISONER  33 

This  was  not  the  front  entrance.  The  house  stood  on  a 
corner,  and  this  door  led  into  a  little  square  hall  with  a 
colonial  staircase  of  charming  right-angled  turns  going 
compactly  up.  Lydia  looked  into  the  room  at  her  right 
and  the  one  at  her  left.  They  were  large  and  nobly  pro 
portioned,  furnished  in  a  faded  harmony  of  antique  forms. 
The  arrangement  of  the  house,  she  fancied,  might  be  much 
like  the  colonel's.  But  though  she  thought  like  lightning 
in  the  excitement  of  her  invasion,  there  was  not  much  clear 
ness  about  it ;  her  heart  was  beating  too  urgently,  and  the 
blood  in  her  ears  had  tightened  them.  No  one  was  in  the 
left-hand  room,  no  one  was  in  the  right ;  only  there  was  a 
sign  of  occupancy :  a  peach-coloured  silk  bag  hung  on  the 
back  of  a  chair  and  the  lacy  corner  of  a  handkerchief  stood 
up  in  its  ruffly  throat.  The  bag,  the  handkerchief, 
brought  her  courage  back.  They  looked  like  a  substantial 
Esther  of  useless  graces  she  had  to  fight.  And  so  pas 
sionately  alive  was  she  to  everything  concerning  Jeffrey 
that  it  seemed  base  of  a  woman  once  belonging  to  him 
to  parade  lacy  trifles  in  ruffly  bags  when  he  was  condemned 
to  coarse,  hard  usages.  But  having  Esther  to  fight,  she 
stepped  into  that  room,  and  immediately  a  warm,  yet,  she 
had  time  to  think,  rather  a  discontented  voice  called  from 
the  room  behind  it : 

"Is  that  you,  Sophy?" 

Lydia  answered  in  an  intemperate  haste,  and  like  many 
another  rebel  to  the  English  tongue,  she  found  a  proper 
pronoun  would  not  serve  her  for  sufficient  emphasis. 

"  No,"  she  said,  "  it's  me." 

And  she  followed  on  the  heels  of  her  words,  with  a  de 
termined  soft  pace,  to  the  room  of  the  voice,  and  came 
upon  a  brown-eyed,  brown-haired,  rather  plump  creature 
in  a  white  dress,  who  was  lying  in  a  long  chair  and  eating 
candied  fruit  from  a  silver  dish.  This,  Lydia  knew,  was 


34  THE  PRISONER 

Esther  Blake.  She  had  expected  to  feel  for  her  the  dis 
taste  of  righteousness  in  the  face  of  the  wrong-doer:  for 
Esther,  she  knew,  was  proven,  by  long-continued  hardness 
of  heart  and  behaviour,  indubitably  wrong.  Here  was 
Esther,  Jeff's  wife,  not  showing  more  than  two-thirds  of 
her  thirty-three  years,  her  brow  unlined,  her  expression  of 
a  general  sweetness  indicating  not  only  that  she  wished 
to  please  but  that  she  had,  in  the  main,  been  pleased. 
The  beauty  of  her  face  was  in  its  long  eyelashes,  absurdly 
long,  as  if  nature  had  said,  "  Here's  a  by-product  we  don't 
know  what  to  do  with.  Put  it  into  lashes."  Her  hands 
were  white  and  exquisitely  cared  for,  and  she  wore  no  wed 
ding  ring.  Lydia  noted  that,  with  an  involuntary  glance, 
but  strangely  it  did  not  move  her  to  any  access  of  indig 
nation.  Anger  she  did  feel,  but  it  was,  childishly,  anger 
over  the  candied  fruit.  "  How  can  you  lie  there  and  eat," 
she  wanted  to  cry,  "  when  Jeff  is  where  he  is  ?  " 

A  little  flicker  ran  over  Esther's  face :  it  might  at  first 
have  been  the  ripple  of  an  alarmed  surprise,  but  she  im 
mediately  got  herself  in  hand.  She  put  her  exquisite  feet 
over  the  side  of  the  chair,  got  up  and,  in  one  deft  motion, 
set  the  fruit  on  a  little  table  and  ran  a  hand  lightly  over 
her  soft  disorder  of  hair. 

"  Do  excuse  me,"  said  she.     "  I  didn't  hear  you." 

"My  name  is  French,"  said  Lydia,  in  an  incisive 
haste,  "  Lydia  French.  I  came  to  talk  with  you  about 
Jeff." 

The  shadow  that  went  over  Esther's  face  was  momen 
tary,  no  more  than  a  bird's  wing  over  a  flowery  plot;  but 
it  was  a  shadow  only.  There  was  no  eagerness  or  uplift 
or  even  trouble  at  the  name  of  Jeff. 

"  Father  came  this  afternoon,"  said  Lydia.  "  He 
wanted  to  talk  things  over.  He  couldn't  get  in." 

"  Oh,"  said  Esther,  "  I'm  sorry  for  that.     So  you  are 


THE  PRISONER  35 

one  of  the  step-children.  Sit  down,  won't  you.  Oh,  do 
take  this  chair." 

Lydia  was  only  too  glad  to  take  any  chair  and  get  the 
strain  off  her  trembling  knees.  It  was  no  trivial  task,  she 
saw,  to  face  Jeff's  wife  and  drag  her  back  to  wifehood. 
But  she  ignored  the  proffer  of  the  softer  chair.  It  was 
easier  to  take  a  straight  one  and  sit  upright,  her  brown 
little  hands  clenched  tremblingly.  Esther,  too,  took  a 
chair  the  twin  of  hers,  as  if  to  accept  no  advantage;  she 
sat  with  dignity  and  waited  gravely.  She  seemed  to  be 
watchful,  intent,  yet  bounded  by  reserves.  It  was  the 
attitude  of  waiting  for  attack. 

"  This  very  next  week,  you  know,  Jeff  will  be  dis 
charged."  Lydia  spoke  with  the  brutality  born  of  her 
desperation.  Still  Esther  watched  her.  "  You  know, 
don't  you  ?  "  Lydia  hurled  at  her.  She  had  a  momentary 
thought,  "  The  woman  is  a  fool."  "  From  jail,"  she  con 
tinued.  "  From  the  Federal  Prison.  You  know,  don't 
you  ?  You  heard  he  had  been  pardoned  ?  " 

Esther  looked  at  her  a  full  minute,  her  face  slowly 
suffusing.  Lydia  saw  the  colour  even  flooding  into  her 
neck.  Her  eyes  did  not  fill,  but  they  deepened  in  some 
unusual  way.  They  seemed  to  be  saying,  defiantly  per 
haps,  that  they  could  cry  if  they  would,  but  they  had 
other  modes  of  empery. 

"You  know,  don't  you?"  Lydia  repeated,  but  more 
gently.  She  began  to  wonder  now  whether  trouble  had 
weakened  the  wife's  brain,  her  power  at  least  of  receptiv- 

ity. 

"  Yes,"  said  Esther.  "  I  know  it,  of  course.  To-day's 
paper  had  quite  a  long  synopsis  of  the  case." 

Now  Lydia  flushed  and  looked  defiant. 

"  I  am  glad  to  know  that,"  she  said.  "  I  must  burn  the 
paper.  Farvie  sha'n't  see  it." 


36  THE  PRISONER 

"  There  were  two  reporters  here  yesterday,"  said 
Esther.  She  spoke  angrily  now.  Her  voice  hinted  that 
this  was  an  indignity  which  need  not  have  been  put  upon 
her. 

"  Did  you  see  them?  "  asked  Lydia,  in  a  flash,  ready  to 
blame  her  whatever  she  did. 

But  the  answer  was  eloquent  with  reproach. 

"  Certainly  I  didn't  see  them.  I  have  never  seen  any 
of  them.  When  that  horrible  newspaper  started  trying 
to  get  him  pardoned,  reporters  came  here  in  shoals.  I 
never  saw  them.  I'd  have  died  sooner." 

"Did  Jeff  write  you  he  didn't  want  to  be  pardoned? 
He  did  us." 

"  No.     He  hasn't  written  me  for  years." 

She  looked  a  baffling  number  of  things  now,  voluntarily 
pathetic,  a  little  scornful,  as  if  she  washed  her  hands  gladly 
of  the  whole  affair. 

"  Farvie  thinks,"  said  Lydia  recklessly,  "  that  you 
haven't  written  to  him." 

"How  could  I?"  asked  Esther,  in  a  quick  rebuttal 
which  actually  had  a  convincing  sound,  "  when  he  didn't 
write  to  me?  " 

"  But  he  was  in  prison." 

"  He  hasn't  had  everything  to  bear,"  said  Esther,  rising 
and  putting  some  figurines  right  on  the  mantel  where  they 
seemed  to  be  right  enough  before.  "  Do  you  know  any 
woman  whose  life  has  been  ruined  as  mine  has  ?  Have  you 
ever  met  one?  Now  have  you?  " 

"  Farvie's  life  is  ruined,"  said  Lydia  incisively.  "  Jeff's 
life  is  ruined,  too.  I  don't  know  whether  it's  any  worse 
for  a  woman  than  for  a  man." 

"  Jeffrey,"  said  Esther,  "  is  taking  the  consequences  of 
his  own  act." 

"  You  don't  mean  to  tell  me  you  think  he  was  to  blame?  " 


THE  PRISONER  37 

Lydia  said,  in  a  low  tone  charged  with  her  own  complexity 
of  sentiment.  She  was  horror-stricken  chiefly.  Esther 
saw  that,  and  looked  at  her  in  a  large  amaze. 

"  You  don't  mean  to  tell  me  you  think  he  wasn't  ?  "  she 
countered. 

"  Why,  of  course  he  wasn't ! "  Lydia's  cheeks  were 
flaming.  She  was  impatiently  conscious  of  this  heat  and 
her  excited  breath.  But  she  had  entered  the  fray,  and 
there  was  no  returning. 

"  Then  who  was  guilty?  "  Esther  asked  it  almost  tri 
umphantly,  as  if  the  point  of  proving  herself  right  were 
more  to  her  than  the  innocence  of  Jeff. 

"  That's  for  us  to  find  out,"  said  Lydia.  She  looked 
like  the  apostle  of  a  holy  war. 

"  But  if  you  could  find  out,  why  haven't  you  done  it  be 
fore  ?  Why  have  you  waited  all  these  years  ?  " 

"  Partly  because  we  weren't  grown  up,  Anne  and  I. 
And  even  when  we  were,  when  we'd  begun  to  think  about 
it,  we  were  giving  dancing  lessons,  to  help  out.  You  know 
Farvie  put  almost  every  cent  he  had  into  paying  the 
creditors,  and  then  it  was  only  a  drop  in  the  bucket.  And 
besides  Jeff  pleaded  guilty,  and  he  kept  writing  Farvie  to 
let  it  all  stand  as  it  was,  and  somehow,  we  were  so  sorry 
for  Jeff  we  couldn't  help  feeling  he'd  got  to  have  his  way. 
Even  if  he  wanted  to  sacrifice  himself  he  ought  to  be  al 
lowed  to,  because  he  couldn't  have  his  way  about  anything 
else.  At  least,  that  was  what  Anne  and  I  felt.  We've 
talked  it  over  a  lot.  We've  hardly  talked  of  anything 
else.  And  we  think  Farvie  feels  so,  too." 

"  You  speak  as  if  it  were  a  sum  of  money  he'd  stolen  out 
of  a  drawer,"  said  Esther.  Her  cheeks  were  red,  like  ex 
quisite  roses.  "  It  wasn't  a  sum  of  money.  I  read  it  all 
over  in  the  paper  the  other  day.  He  had  stockholders' 
money,  and  he  plunged,  it  said,  just  before  the  panic.  He 


38  THE  PRISONER 

invested  other  people's  money  in  the  wrong  things,  and 
then,  it  said,  he  tried  to  realise." 

"  I  can't  help  it,"  said  Lydia  doggedly.  "  He  wasn't 
guilty." 

"  Why  should  he  have  said  he  was  guilty  ?  "  Esther 
put  this  to  her  with  her  unchanged  air  of  triumphant  cru 
elty. 

"  He  might,  to  save  somebody  else." 

Esther  was  staring  now  and  Lydia  stared  back,  caught 
by  the  almost  terrified  surprise  in  Esther's  face.  Did 
she  know  about  Jim  Reardon?  But  Esther  broke  the 
silence,  not  in  confession,  if  she  did  know :  with  violence 
rather. 

"  You  never  will  prove  any  such  thing.  Never  in  the 
world.  The  money  was  in  Jeff's  hands.  He  hadn't  even 
a  partner." 

"  He  had  friends,"  said  Lydia.  But  now  she  felt  she 
had  implied  more  than  was  discreet,  and  she  put  a  sign  up 
mentally  not  to  go  that  way.  Whatever  Esther  said,  she 
would  keep  her  own  eyes  on  the  sign. 


IV 

Still  she  returned  to  the  assault.  Her  next  question 
even  made  her  raise  her  brows  a  little,  it  seemed  so  crude 
and  horrible;  she  could  have  laughed  outright  at  herself 
for  having  the  nerve  to  put  it.  She  couldn't  imagine  what 
the  colonel  would  have  thought  of  her.  Anne,  she  knew, 
would  have  crumpled  up  into  silken  disaster  like  a  flower 
under  too  sharp  a  wind. 

"  Aren't  you  going  to  ask  Jeff  here  to  live  with  you  ?  " 

Esther  was  looking  at  her  in  a  fiery  amaze  Lydia  knew 
she  well  deserved.  "  Who  is  this  child,"  Esther  seemed  to 
be  saying,  "  rising  up  out  of  nowhere  and  pursuing  me 
into  my  most  intimate  retreats  ? "  She  answered  in  a 
careful  hedging  way  that  was  not  less  pretty  than  her 
unconsidered  speech: 

"  Jeffrey  and  I  haven't  been  in  communication  for 
years." 

Then  Lydia  lost  her  temper  and  put  herself  in  the 
wrong. 

"  Why,"  said  she,  "  you  said  that  before.  Besides,  it's 
no  answer  anyway.  You  could  have  written  to  him,  and 
as  soon  as  you  heard  he  was  going  to  be  pardoned,  you 
could  have  made  your  plans.  Don't  you  mean  to  ask  him 
here?" 

Esther  made  what  sounded  like  an  irrelevant  answer, 
but  it  meant  apparently  something  even  solemn  to  her. 

"  My  grandmother,"  said  she,  "  is  an  old  lady.  She's 
bedridden.  She's  upstairs,  and  I  keep  the  house  very 
quiet  on  her  account." 

39 


40  THE  PRISONER 

Lydia  had  a  hot  desire  to  speak  out  what  she  really  felt : 
to  say,  "  Your  grandmother's  being  bedridden  has  no  more 
to  do  with  it  than  the  cat."  Lydia  was  prone  to  seek  the 
cat  for  exquisite  comparison.  Persons,  with  her,  could 
no  more  sing  —  or  dance  —  than  the  cat.  She  found  the 
cat,  in  the  way  of  metaphor,  a  mysteriously  useful  animal. 
But  the  very  embroidery  of  Esther's  mode  of  speech  for 
bade  her  invoking  that  eccentric  aid.  Lydia  was  not 
eager  to  quarrel.  She  would  have  been  horrified  if  cir 
cumstance  had  ever  provoked  her  into  a  rash  word  to  her 
father,  and  with  Anne  she  was  a  dove  of  peace.  But  Es 
ther  by  a  word,  it  seemed,  by  a  look,  had  the  power  of 
waking  her  to  unholy  revolt.  She  thought  it  was  because 
Esther  was  so  manifestly  not  playing  fair.  Why  couldn't 
she  say  she  wouldn't  have  Jeff  in  the  house,  instead  of  sit 
ting  here  and  talking  like  a  nurse  in  a  sanitarium,  about 
bedridden  grandmothers  ? 

"  It  isn't  because  we  don't  want  him  to  come  to  us,"  said 
Lydia.  "  Farvie's  been  living  for  it  all  these  years,  and 
Anne  and  I  don't  talk  of  anything  else." 

"  Isn't  that  interesting !  "  said  Esther,  though  not  as  if 
she  put  a  question.  "  And  you're  no  relation  at  all." 
She  made  it,  for  the  moment,  seem  rather  a  breach  of  taste 
to  talk  of  nothing  else  but  a  man  to  whom  Lydia  wasn't  a 
sister,  and  Lydia's  face  burned  in  answer.  A  wave  of 
childish  misery  came  over  her.  She  wished  she  had  not 
come.  She  wished  she  knew  how  to  get  away.  And  while 
she  took  in  Esther's  harmony  of  dress,  her  own  little  odds 
and  ends  of  finery  grew  painfully  cheap  to  her.  But  the 
telephone  bell  rang  in  the  next  room,  and  Esther  rose  and 
excused  herself.  While  she  was  gone,  Lydia  sat  there  with 
her  little  hands  gripped  tightly.  Now  she  wished  she  knew 
how  to  get  out  of  the  house  another  way,  before  Esther 
should  come  back.  If  it  were  not  for  the  credit  of  the 


THE  PRISONER  41 

family,  she  would  find  the  other  way.  Meantime  Esther's 
voice,  very  liquid  now  that  she  was  not  talking  to  a  sister 
woman,  flowed  in  to  her  and  filled  her  with  a  new  distrust 
and  hatred. 

"  Please  come,"  said  Esther.  "  I  depend  upon  it.  Do 
you  mean  you  weren't  ever  coming  any  more?  " 

When  she  appeared  again,  Lydia  was  quivering  with  a 
childish  anger.  She  had  risen,  and  stood  with  her  hands 
clasped  before  her.  So  she  was  in  the  habit  of  standing 
before  her  dancing  class  until  the  music  should  begin  and 
lead  her  through  the  measures.  She  was  delightful  so  and, 
from  long  training,  entirely  self-possessed. 

"  Good-bye,"  said  she. 

"  Don't  go,"  said  Esther,  in  a  conventional  prettiness, 
but  no  such  beguilement  as  she  had  wafted  through  the 
telephone.  "  It's  been  so  pleasant  meeting  you." 

Again  Lydia  had  her  ungodly  impulse  to  contradict,  to 
say :  "  No,  it  hasn't  either.  You  know  it  hasn't."  But 
she  turned  away  and,  head  a  little  bent,  walked  out  of  the 
house,  saying  again,  "  Good-bye." 

When  she  got  out  into  the  dusk,  she  went  slowly,  to  cool 
down  and  think  it  over.  It  wouldn't  do  for  the  colonel 
and  Anne  to  see  her  on  the  swell  of  such  excitement,  espe 
cially  as  she  had  only  defeat  to  bring  them.  She  had 
meant  to  go  home  in  a  triumphant  carelessness  and  say : 
"  Oh,  yes,  I  saw  her.  I  just  walked  right  in.  That's 
what  you  ought  to  have  done,  Farvie.  But  we  had  it  out, 
and  I  think  she's  ready  to  do  the  decent  thing  by  Jeff." 
No  such  act  of  virtuous  triumph:  she  had  simply  been  a 
silly  girl,  and  Anne  would  find  it  out.  Near  the  corner 
she  met  the  man  she  had  seen  on  her  way  in  coming,  and 
he  looked  at  her  again  with  that  solicitous  air  of  being 
ready  to  take  off  his  hat.  She  went  on  with  a  conscious 
ness  of  perhaps  having  achieved  an  indiscretion  in  coining 


42  THE  PRISONER 

out  bareheaded,  and  the  man  proceeded  to  Esther's  door. 
He  was  expected.  Esther  herself  let  him  in. 

Reardon  had  not  planned  to  go  to  see  her  at  that  hour. 
He  had  meant  to  spend  it  at  the  club,  feet  up,  trotting  over 
the  path  of  custom,  knowing  to  a  dot  what  men  he  would 
find  there  and  what  each  would  say.  Old  Dan  Wheeler 
would  talk  about  the  advisability  of  eating  sufficient  vege 
tables  to  keep  your  stomach  well  distended.  Young 
Wheeler  would  refer  owlishly  to  the  Maries  and  Jennies  of 
an  opera  troupe  recently  in  Addington,  and  Ollie  Hast 
ings,  the  oldest  bore,  would  tell  long  stories,  and  wheeze. 
But  Reardon  was  no  sooner  in  his  seat,  with  his  glass  be 
side  him,  than  he  realised  he  was  disturbed,  in  some  unex 
pected  way.  It  might  have  been  the  pretty  girl  he  met 
going  into  Esther's ;  it  might  have  been  the  thought  of  Es 
ther  herself,  the  unheard  call  from  her.  So  he  left  his 
glass  untasted  and  telephoned  her:  "You  all  right?" 
To  which  Esther  replied  in  a  doubtful  purr.  "  Want  me 
to  come  up?"  he  asked,  as  he  thought,  against  his  will. 
And  he  swallowed  a  third  of  his  firewater  at  a  gulp  and 
went  to  find  her.  He  knew  what  he  should  find, —  an  Es 
ther  who  bade  him  remember,  by  all  the  pliancy  of  her 
attractive  body  and  every  tone  of  her  voice,  how  irrecon 
cilably  hard  it  was  that  she  should  have  a  husband  par 
doned  out  of  prison,  a  husband  of  whom  she  was  afraid. 

Lydia  found  Anne  waiting  at  the  gate. 

"Why,  where've  you  been?"  asked  Anne,  with  all  the 
air  of  a  prim  mother. 

"  Walking,"  said  Lydia  meekly. 

"  You'd  better  have  come  with  us,"  said  Anne.  "  It  was 
very  nice.  Farvie  told  me  things." 

"  Yes,"  said  Lydia,  "  I  wish  I  had." 

"Without  your  hat,  too,"  pursued  Anne  anxiously. 
"  I  don't  know  whether  they  do  that  here." 


THE  PRISONER  43 

Lydia  remembered  Reardon,  and  thought  she  knew. 

They  went  to  bed  early,  in  a  low  state  of  mind.  The 
colonel  was  tired,  and  Anne,  watching  him  from  above  as 
he  toiled  up  the  stairs,  wondered  if  he  needed  a  little 
strychnia.  She  would  remember,  she  thought,  to  give 
it  to  him  in  the  morning.  After  they  had  said  good 
night,  and  the  colonel,  indeed,  was  in  his  bed,  she  heard 
the  knocker  clang  and  slipped  down  the  stairs  to  answer. 
Halfway  she  stopped,  for  Mary  Nellen,  candle  in  hand, 
had  arrived  from  the  back  regions,  and  was,  with  admirable 
caution,  opening  the  door  a  crack.  But  immediately  she 
threw  it  wide,  and  tossed  her  own  reassurance  over  her 
shoulder,  back  to  Anne. 

"  Mr.  Alston  Choate.     To  see  your  father." 

So  Anne  came  down  the  stairs,  and  Mr.  Choate,  hat  in 
hand,  apologised  for  calling  so  late.  He  was  extremely 
busy.  He  had  to  be  at  the  office  over  time,  but  he  didn't 
want  to-day's  sun  to  go  down  and  he  not  have  welcomed 
Mr.  Blake.  Anne  had  a  chance,  in  the  space  of  his  deliv 
ering  this  preamble,  to  think  what  a  beautiful  person  he 
was.  He  had  a  young  face  lighted  by  a  twisted  whimsical 
smile,  and  a  capacious  forehead,  built  out  a  little  into 
knobs  of  a  noble  sort,  as  if  there  were  ample  chambers  be 
hind  for  the  storing  away  of  precedent.  Altogether  he 
would  have  satisfied  every  aesthetic  requirement :  but  he  had 
a  broken  nose.  The  portrait  painter  lusted  for  him,  and 
then  retired  sorrowfully.  But  the  nose  made  him  very 
human.  Anne  didn't  know  its  eccentricity  was  the  result 
of  breakage,  but  she  saw  it  was  quite  unlike  other  noses 
and  found  it  superior  to  them. 

Alston  Choate  spent  every  waking  minute  of  his  life  in 
the  practice  of  law  and  the  reading  of  novels  ;  he  was  either 
digging  into  precedent,  expounding  it,  raging  over  its  fu 
tilities,  or  guiltily  losing  himself  in  the  life  of  books. 


44  THE  PRISONER 

What  he  really  loved  was  music  and  the  arts,  and  he  dearly 
liked  to  read  about  the  people  who  had  leisure  to  follow 
such  lures,  time  to  be  emotional  even,  and  indulge  in  pretty 
talk.  Yet  law  was  the  giant  he  had  undertaken  to  wrestle 
with,  and  he  kept  his  grip.  Sometime,  he  thought,  the 
cases  would  be  all  tried  or  the  feet  of  litigants  would  seek 
other  doors.  The  wave  of  middle  age  would  toss  him  to 
an  island  of  leisure,  and  there  he  would  sit  down  and  hear 
music  and  read  long  books. 

As  he  saw  Anne  coming  down  the  stairs,  he  thought  of 
music  personified.  A  crowd  of  adjectives  rose  in  his  mind 
and,  like  attendant  graces,  grouped  themselves  about  her. 
He  could  imagine  her  sitting  at  archaic  instruments,  call 
ing  out  of  them,  with  slim  fingers,  diaphanous  melo 
dies.  Yet  the  beauty  that  surrounded  her  like  a  light 
mantle  she  had  snatched  up  from  nature  to  wear  about 
her  always,  did  not  displace  the  other  vision  of  beauty  in 
his  heart.  It  did  not  even  jostle  it.  Esther  Blake  was, 
he  knew,  the  sum  of  the  ineffable  feminine. 

While  he  made  that  little  explanation  of  his  haste  in 
coming  and  his  fear  that  it  was  an  untoward  time,  Anne 
heard  him  with  a  faint  smile,  all  her  listening  in  her  up 
turned  face.  She  was  grateful  to  him.  Her  father,  she 
knew,  would  be  the  stronger  for  men's  hands  to  hold  him 
up.  She  returned  a  little  explanation.  Father  was  so 
tired.  He  had  gone  to  bed.  Then  it  seemed  to  her  that 
Choate  did  a  thing  unsurpassed  in  splendour. 

"  You  are  one  of  the  daughters,  aren't  you  ? "  he 
said. 

"  Yes,"  she  answered.     "  I'm  Anne." 

Mary  Nellen  had  delivered  the  candle  to  her  hand,  and 
she  stood  there  holding  it  in  a  serious  manner,  as  if  it 
lighted  some  ceremonial.  Then  it  was  that  Choate  made 
the  speech  that  clinched  his  hold  upon  her  heart. 


THE  PRISONER  45 

"  When  do  you  expect  your  brother?  " 

Anne's  face  flooded.  He  was  not  acting  as  if  Jeff,  com 
ing  from  an  unspeakable  place,  mustn't  be  mentioned.  He 
was  asking  exactly  as  if  Jeff  had  been  abroad  and  the  ship 
was  almost  in.  It  was  like  a  pilot  boat  going  out  to  see 
that  he  got  in  safely.  And  feeling  the  circumstance 
greatly,  she  found  herself  answering  with  a  slow  serious 
ness  which  did,  indeed,  carry  much  dignity. 

"  We  are  not  sure.  We  think  he  may  come  directly 
through ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  he  may  be  tired  and  not 
feel  up  to  it." 

Choate  smiled  his  irregular,  queer  smile.  He  was  turn 
ing  away  now. 

"  Tell  him  I  shall  be  in  soon,"  he  said.  «  I  fancy  he'll 
remember  me.  Good-night." 

Lydia  was  hanging  over  the  balustrade. 

"  Who  was  it?  "  she  asked,  as  Anne  went  up. 

Anne  told  her  and  because  she  looked  dreamy  and  not 
displeased,  Lydia  asked: 

"Nice?" 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Anne.  "  You've  heard  Farvie  speak  of 
him.  Exactly  what  Farvie  said." 

Lydia  had  gone  some  paces  in  undressing.  She  stood 
there  in  a  white  wrapper,  with  her  hair  in  its  long  braid, 
and  stared  at  Anne  for  a  considering  interval. 

"  I  think  I'd  better  tell  you,"  said  she.  "  I've  been  to 
see  her." 

There  was  but  one  person  who  could  have  been  meant, 
and  yet  that  was  so  impossible  that  Anne  stared  and 
asked: 

"Who?" 

They  had  always  spoken  of  Esther  as  Esther,  among 
themselves,  quite  familiarly,  but  now  Lydia  felt  she  would 
die  rather  than  mention  her  name. 


46  THE  PRISONER 

"  She  is  a  hateful  woman,"  said  Lydia,  "  perfectly  hate 
ful." 

"  But  what  did  you  go  for?  "  Anne  asked,  in  a  gentle 
perplexity. 

"  To  find  '  out,"  said  Lydia,  in  a  savage  tearfulness, 
"  what  she  means  to  do." 

"And  what  does  she?" 

"  Nothing." 


The  house,  almost  of  its  own  will,  slid  into  order. 
Mary  Nellen  was  a  wonderful  person.  She  arranged  and 
dusted  and  put  questions  to  Anne  as  to  Cicero  and  Virgil, 
and  then,  when  Anne  convoyed  her  further,  to  the  colonel, 
and  he  found  a  worn  lexicon  in  the  attic  and  began  to 
dig  out  translations  and  chant  melodious  periods.  The 
daughters  could  have  hugged  Mary  Nellen,  bright-eyed 
and  intent  on  advancement  up  the  hill  of  learning,  for  they 
gave  him  something  to  do  to  mitigate  suspense  until  his 
son  should  come.  And  one  day  at  twilight,  when  they  did 
not  know  it  was  going  to  be  that  day  at  all,  but  when 
things  were  in  a  complete  state  of  readiness  and  everybody 
disposed  to  start  at  a  sound,  the  front  door  opened  and 
Jeffrey,  as  if  he  must  not  actually  enter  until  he  was  bid 
den,  stood  there  and  knocked  on  the  casing.  Mary  Nel 
len,  having  more  than  mortal  wit,  seemed  to  guess  who  he 
was,  and  that  the  colonel  must  not  be  startled.  She  ap 
peared  before  Lydia  in  the  dining-room  and  gave  her  a 
signalling  grimace.  Lydia  followed  her,  and  met  the  man, 
now  a  step  inside  the  hall.  Lydia,  too,  knew  who  it  was. 
She  felt  the  blood  run  painfully  into  her  face,  and  hoped 
he  didn't  see  how  confused  she  was  with  her  task  of  re 
ceiving  him  exactly  right  after  all  this  time  of  prepara 
tion.  There  was  no  question  of  kissing  or  in  any  way 
sealing  her  sisterly  devotion.  She  gave  him  a  cold  little 
hand,  and  he  took  it  with  the  same  bewildered  acquiescence. 
She  looked  at  him,  it  seemed  to  her,  a  long  time,  perhaps 
a  full  minute,  and  found  him  wholly  alien  to  her  dreams 

47 


48  THE  PRISONER 

of  the  wronged  creature  who  was  to  be  her  brother.  He 
was  of  a  good  height,  broad  in  the  shoulders  and  standing 
well.  His  face  held  nothing  of  the  look  she  had  always 
wrought  into  it  from  the  picture  of  his  college  year.  It 
was  rather  square.  The  outline  at  least  couldn't  be 
changed.  The  chin,  she  thought,  was  lovable.  The  eyes 
were  large  and  blue ;  stern,  it  seemed,  but  really  from  the 
habit  of  the  forehead  that  had  been  scarred  with  deepest 
lines.  The  high  cheekbones  gave  him  an  odd  look  as  if 
she  saw  him  in  bronze.  They  stared  at  each  other  and 
Jeffrey  thought  he  ought  to  assure  her  he  wasn't  a  tramp, 
when  Lydia  found  her  voice. 

"  I'll  tell  Farvie,"  said  she.  She  turned  away  from  him, 
and  immediately  whirled  back  again.  u  I've  got  to  do  it 
carefully.  You  stay  here." 

But  in  the  library  where  the  colonel  sat  over  Mary  Nel- 
len's  last  classic  riddle,  she  couldn't  break  it  at  all. 

"  He's  come,"  she  said. 

The  colonel  got  up  and  Virgil  slid  to  the  floor. 

"Where  is  he?  "  he  called,  in  a  sharp  voice.  It  was  a 
voice  touched  with  age  and  apprehension.  The  girls 
hadn't  known  how  old  a  man  he  was  until  they  heard  him 
calling  for  his  son.  Jeffrey  heard  it  and  came  in  with  a 
few  long  steps,  and  his  father  met  him  at  the  door.  To 
the  two  girls  Jeff  seemed  astonished  at  the  emotion  he  was 
awakening.  How  could  he  be,  they  wondered,  when  this 
instant  of  his  release  had  been  so  terrible  and  so  beautiful 
for  a  long  time?  The  tears  came  rushing  to  their  eyes, 
as  they  saw  Farvie.  He  had  laid  aside  all  his  gentle  re 
straint,  and  put  his  shaking  hands  on  Jeffrey's  shoulders. 
And  then  he  called  him  by  the  name  he  had  been  saying 
over  in  his  heart  for  these  last  lean  years : 

"  My  son !  my  son !  " 

If  they  had  kissed,  Lydia  would  not  have  been  surprised. 


THE  PRISONER  49 

But  the  two  men  looked  at  each  other,  the  colonel  took 
down  his  hands,  and  Jeffrey  drew  forward  a  chair  for  him. 

"  Sit  down  a  minute,"  he  said,  quite  gently,  and  then 
the  girls  knew  that  he  really  had  been  moved,  though  he 
hadn't  shown  it,  and,  ready  to  seize  upon  anything  to  love 
in  him,  they  decided  they  loved  his  voice.  When  they  had 
got  away  out  of  the  room  and  stood  close  together  in  the 
dining-room,  as  if  he  were  a  calamity  to  be  fled  from,  that 
was  the  only  thing  they  could  think  of  to  break  their  si 
lence. 

"  He's  got  a  lovely  voice,"  said  Anne,  and  Lydia  an 
swered  chokingly: 

"  Yes." 

"  Do  you  think  he  sings  ?  "  Anne  pursued,  more,  Lydia 
knew,  to  loosen  the  tension  than  anything.  "  Farvie  never 
told  us  that." 

But  Lydia  couldn't  answer  any  more,  and  then  they  both 
became  aware  that  Mary  Nellen  had  hurried  out  some  sup 
per  from  the  pantry  and  put  quite  an  array  of  candles  on 
the  table.  She  had  then  disappeared.  Mary  Nellen  had 
great  delicacy  of  feeling.  Anne  began  to  light  the  candles, 
and  Lydia  went  back  to  the  library.  The  colonel  and 
Jeffrey  were  sitting  there  like  two  men  with  nothing  in 
particular  to  say,  but,  because  they  happened  to  be  in  the 
same  room,  exchanging  commonplaces. 

"  Supper's  in  the  dining-room,"  said  Lydia,  in  a  weak 
little  voice. 

The  colonel  was  about  to  rise,  but  Jeffrey  said: 

"  Not  for  me." 

"  Have  you  had  something?  "  his  father  asked,  and  Jef 
frey  answered: 

"  None  for  me  —  thank  you." 

The  last  two  words  seemed  to  be  an  afterthought.  Ly 
dia  wondered  if  he  hadn't  felt  like  thanking  anybody  in 


50  THE  PRISONER 

years.  There  seemed  to  be  nothing  for  her  to  do  in  this 
rigid  sort  of  reunion,  and  she  went  back  to  Anne  in  the 
dining-room. 

"  He  doesn't  want  anything,"  she  said.  "  We  can  clear 
away." 

They  did  it  in  their  deft  fashion  of  working  together, 
and  then  sat  down  in  the  candlelight,  making  no  pretence 
of  reading  or  talk.  All  the  time  they  could  hear  the  two 
voices  from  the  library,  going  on  at  regular  intervals. 
At  ten  o'clock  they  were  still  going  on,  at  eleven.  Lydia 
felt  a  deadly  sleepiness,  but  she  roused  then  and  said,  in 
the  midst  of  a  yawn: 

"  I'm  afraid  Farvie'll  be  tired." 

"  Yes,"  said  Anne.     "  I'll  go  and  speak  to  them." 

She  went  out  of  the  room,  and  crossed  the  hall  in  her 
delicate,  soft-stepping  way.  She  seemed  to  Lydia  aston 
ishingly  brave.  Lydia  could  hear  her  voice  from  the  other 
room,  such  a  kind  voice  but  steadied  with  a  little  clear  au 
thority. 

"  You  mustn't  get  tired,  Farvie." 

The  strange  voice  jumped  in  on  the  heels  of  hers,  as  if 
it  felt  it  ought  to  be  reproved. 

"  Of  course  not.     I'd  no  idea  how  late  it  was." 

Anne  turned  to  Jeffrey.  Lydia,  listening,  could  tell 
from  the  different  direction  of  the  voice. 

"  Your  room  is  all  ready.     It's  your  old  room." 

There  was  a  pin-prick  of  silence  and  then  the  strange 
voice  said  quickly :  "  Thank  you,"  as  if  it  wanted  to  get 
everything,  even  civilities,  quickly  over. 

Lydia  sat  still  in  the  dining-room.  The  candles  had 
guttered  and  gone  down,  but  she  didn't  feel  it  possible  to 
move  out  of  her  lethargy.  She  was  not  only  sleepy  but 
very  tired.  Yet  the  whole  matter,  she  knew,  was  that  this 
undramatic  home-coming  had  deadened  all  her  expecta- 


THE  PRISONER  51 

tions.  She  had  reckoned  upon  a  brother  ready  to  be  called 
brother;  she  had  meant  to  devote  herself  to  him  and  see 
Anne  devote  herself,  with  an  equal  mind.  And  here  was  a 
gaunt  creature  with  a  sodden  skin  who  didn't  want  any 
thing  they  could  do.  She  heard  him  say  "  Good-night." 
There  was  only  one  good-night,  which  must  have  been  to  the 
colonel,  though  Anne  was  standing  by,  and  then  she  heard 
Anne,  in  a  little  kind  voice,  asking  her  father  if  he  wouldn't 
have  something  hot  before  he  went  to  bed.  No,  he  said. 
He  should  sleep.  His  voice  sounded  exhilarated,  with  a 
thrill  in  it  of  some  even  gay  relief,  not  at  all  like  the  voice 
that  had  said  good-night.  And  Anne  lighted  his  candle  for 
him  and  watched  him  up  the  stairs,  and  Lydia  felt  curi 
ously  outside  it  all,  as  if  they  were  playing  the  play  with 
out  her.  Anne  came  in  then  and  looked  solicitously  at  the 
guttered  candles  of  which  one  was  left  with  a  winding- 
sheet,  like  a  tipsy  host  that  had  drunk  the  rest  under  the 
table,  and  appeared  to  be  comforting  the  others  for  hav 
ing  made  such  a  spectacle  of  themselves  to  no  purpose. 
Lydia  was  so  sleepy  now  that  there  seemed  to  be  several 
Annes  and  she  heard  herself  saying  f ractiously : 

"  Oh,  let's  go  to  bed." 

Through  the  short  night  she  dreamed  confusedly,  al 
ways  a  dream  about  offering  Farvie  a  supper  tray,  and 
his  saying :  "  No,  I  never  mean  to  eat  again."  And  then 
the  tray  itself  seemed  to  be  the  trouble,  and  it  had  to  be 
filled  all  over.  But  nobody  wanted  the  food. 

In  the  early  morning  she  awoke  with  the  sun  full  upon 
her,  for  she  had  been  too  tired  the  night  before  to  close  a 
blind.  She  got  out  of  bed  and  ran  to  the  window.  The 
night  had  been  so  confusing  that  she  felt  in  very  much  of  a 
hurry  to  see  the  day.  Her  room  overlooked  the  orchard, 
outlined  by  its  high  red  wall.  For  the  first  time,  the  wall 
seemed  to  have  a  purpose.  A  man  in  shirt  and  trousers 


52  THE  PRISONER 

was  walking  fast  inside  it,  and  while  she  looked  he  began 
to  run.  It  was  Jeffrey,  the  real  Jeffrey,  she  felt  sure; 
not  the  Jeffrey  of  last  night  who  had  been  so  far  from  her 
old  conception  of  him  that  she  had  to  mould  him  all  over 
now  to  fit  him  into  the  orchard  scene.  He  was  running  in 
a  foolish,  half-hearted  way ;  but  suddenly  he  seemed  to  call 
upon  his  will  and  set  his  elbows  and  ran  hard.  Lydia  felt 
herself  panting  in  sympathy.  She  had  a  distaste  for  him, 
too,  even  with  this  ache  of  pity  sharper  than  any  she  had 
felt  while  she  dreamed  about  him  before  he  came.  What 
did  he  want  to  do  it  for?  she  thought,  as  she  watched  him 
run.  Why  need  he  stir  up  in  her  a  deeper  sorrow  than 
any  she  had  felt?  She  stepped  back  from  her  stand  be 
hind  the  curtain,  and  began  to  brush  her  hair.  She  wasn't 
very  happy.  It  was  impossible  to  feel  triumphant  be 
cause  he  was  out  of  prison.  She  had  lost  a  cherished 
dream,  that  was  all.  After  this  she  wouldn't  wake  in  the 
morning  thinking :  "  Some  day  he'll  be  free."  She  would 
think:  "  He's  come.  What  shall  we  do  with  him?  " 

When  she  -ftx-nt  down  she  found  everybody  had  got  up 
early,  and  Mary  Nellen,  with  some  prescience  of  it,  had 
breakfast  ready.  Jeff,  now  in  his  coat,  stood  by  the  din 
ing-room  door  with  his  father,  talking  in  a  commonplace 
way  about  the  house  as  it  used  to  be,  and  the  colonel  was 
professing  himself  glad  no  newer  fashions  had  made  him 
change  it  in  essentials. 

"  Here  they  are,"  said  he.  "  Here  are  the  girls." 
Anne,  while  Lydia  entered  from  the  hall,  was  coming 
the  other  way,  from  the  kitchen  where  she  had  been  to 
match  conclusions  with  Mary  Nellen  about  bacon  and 
toast.  Anne  was  flushed  from  the  kitchen  heat,  and  she 
had  the  spirit  to  smile  and  call,  "  Good  morning."  But 
Lydia  fi-lt  halting  and  speechless.  She  had  thought 
proudly  of  the  tact  she  should  show  when  this  moment 


THE  PRISONER  53 

came,  but  she  met  it  like  a  child.  They  sat  down,  and 
Anne  poured  coffee  and  asked  how  Farvie  had  slept.  But 
before  anybody  had  begun  to  eat,  there  was  a  knock  at 
the  front  door,  and  Mary  Nellen,  answering  it,  came  back 
to  Anne,  in  a  distinct  puzzle  over  what  was  to  be  done 
now: 

"  It's  a  newspaper  man." 

Lydia,  in  her  distress,  gave  Jeffrey  a  quick  look,  to  see  if 
he  had  heard.  He  put  his  napkin  down.  His  jaw  seemed 
suddenly  to  set. 

"  Reporters  ?  "  he  asked  his  father. 

The  fulness  had  gone  out  of  Farvie's  face. 

"  I  think  you'd  better  let  me  see  them,"  he  began,  but 
Jeffrey  got  up  and  pushed  back  his  chair. 

"  No,"  said  he.     "  Go  on  with  your  breakfast." 

They  heard  him  in  the  hall,  giving  a  curt  greeting. 
"  What  do  you  want?  "  it  seemed  to  say.  "  Get  it  over." 

There  was  a  deep-toned  query  then,  and  Jeffrey  an 
swered,  without  lowering  his  voice,  in  what  seemed  to  Lydia 
and  Anne,  watching  the  effect  on  their  father,  a  reckless, 
if  not  a  brutal,  disregard  of  decencies : 

"  Nothing  to  say.  Yes,  I  understand.  You  fellows 
have  got  to  get  a  story.  But  you  can't.  I've  been  par 
doned  out,  that's  all.  I'm  here.  That  ends  it." 

It  didn't  end  it  for  them.  They  kept  on  proffering  per 
suasive  little  notes  of  interrogative  sound,  and  possibly 
they  advanced  their  claim  to  be  heard  because  they  had 
their  day's  work  to  do. 

"  Sorry,"  said  Jeff,  yet  not  too  curtly.  "  Yes,  I  did 
write  for  the  prison  paper.  Yes,  it  was  in  my  hands. 
No,  I  hadn't  the  slightest  intention  of  over-turning  any 
system.  Reason  for  doing  it?  Why,  because  that's  the 
way  the  thing  looked  to  me.  Not  on  your  life.  I  sha'n't 
write  a  word  for  any  paper.  Sorry.  Good-bye." 


54  THE  PRISONER 

The  front  door  closed.  It  had  been  standing  wide,  for 
it  was  a  warm  morning,  but  Lydia  could  imagine  he  shut 
it  now  in  a  way  to  make  more  certain  his  tormentors  had 
gone.  While  he  was  out  there  her  old  sweet  sympathy 
came  flooding  back,  but  when  he  strode  into  the  room  and 
took  up  his  napkin  again,  she  stole  one  glance  at  him  and 
met  his  scowl  and  didn't  like  him  any  more.  The  scowl 
wasn't  for  her.  It  was  an  introspective  scowl,  born  out 
of  things  he  intimately  knew  and  couldn't  communicate  if 
he  tried. 

The  colonel  had  looked  quite  radiantly  happy  that 
morning.  Now  his  colour  had  died  down,  leaving  in  his 
cheeks  the  clear  pallor  of  age,  and  his  hands  were  trem 
bling.  It  seemed  that  somebody  had  to  speak,  and  he  did 
it,  faintly. 

"  I  hope  you  are  not  going  to  be  pursued  by  that  kind 
of  thing." 

"  It's  all  in  the  day's  work,"  said  Jeffrey. 

He  was  eating  his  breakfast  with  a  careful  attention  to 
detail.  Anne  thought  he  seemed  like  a  painstaking  child 
not  altogether  sure  of  his  manners.  She  thought,  too, 
with  her  swift  insight  into  the  needs  of  man,  that  he  was 
horribly  hungry.  She  was  not,  like  Lydia,  on  the  verge 
of  impulse  all  the  time,  but  she  broke  out  here,  and  then 
bit  her  lip : 

"  I  don't  believe  you  did  have  anything  to  eat  last 
night." 

Lydia  gave  a  little  jump  in  her  chair.  She  didn't  see 
how  Anne  dared  bait  the  scowling  martyr.  He  looked  at 
Anne.  His  scowl  continued.  They  began  to  see  he  per 
haps  couldn't  smooth  it  out.  But  he  smiled  a  little. 

"  Because  I'm  so  hungry  ? "  he  asked.  His  voice 
sounded  kind.  "  Well,  I  didn't." 


THE  PRISONER  55 

Lydia,  now  conversation  had  begun,  wanted  to  be  in  it. 

"  Why  not?  "  asked  she,  and  Anne  gave  a  little  protest 
ing  note. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Jeffrey,  considering.  "  I  didn't 
feel  like  it." 

This  he  said  awkwardly,  but  they  all,  with  a  rush  of 
pity  for  him,  thought  they  knew  what  he  meant.  He  had 
eaten  his  food  within  restraining  walls,  probably  in  silence, 
and  to  take  up  the  kind  ceremonial  of  common  life  was  too 
much  for  him.  Anne  poured  him  another  cup  of  coffee. 

"  Seen  Jim  Reardon  ?  "  Jeffrey  asked  his  father. 

Anne  and  Lydia  could  scarcely  forbear  another  glance 
at  him.  Here  was  Reardon,  the  evil  influence  behind  him, 
too  soon  upon  the  scene.  They  would  not  have  had  his 
name  mentioned  until  it  should  be  brought  out  in  Jeffrey's 
vindication. 

"  No,"  said  the  colonel.     "  Alston  Choate  called." 

"  I  wonder  what  Reardon's  doing  now?  "  Jeffrey  asked. 

But  his  father  did  not  know. 

Jeffrey  finished  rapidly,  and  then  leaned  back  in  his 
chair,  looked  out  of  the  window  and  forgot  them  all. 
Lydia  felt  one  of  her  disproportioned  indignations.  She 
was  afraid  the  colonel  was  not  going  to  have  the  beautiful 
time  with  him  their  hopes  had  builded.  The  colonel  looked 
older  still  than  he  had  an  hour  ago. 

"What  shall  we  do,  my  son?"  he  asked.  "Go  for  a 
walk  —  in  the  orchard?" 

A  walk  in  the  street  suddenly  occurred  to  him  as  the 
wrong  thing  to  offer  a  man  returned  to  the  battery  of 
curious  eyes. 

"  If  you  like,"  said  Jeffrey  indifferently.  "  Do  you 
take  one  after  breakfast?  " 

He  spoke  as  if  it  were  entirely  for  his  father,  and  Anne 


56  THE  PRISONER 

and  Lydia  wondered,  Anne  in  her  kind  way  and  the  other 
hotly,  how  he  could  forget  that  all  their  passionate  in 
terests  were  for  him  alone. 

"  Not  necessarily,"  said  the  colonel.  They  were  rising. 
"  I  was  thinking  of  you  —  my  son." 

"  What  makes  you  call  me  that  ?  "  Jeffrey  asked  curi 
ously. 

They  were  in  the  hall  now,  looking  out  beyond  the  great 
sun  patch  on  the  floor,  to  the  lilac  trees. 
"What  did  I  call  you?" 
"  Son.     You  never  used  to." 

Lydia  felt  she  couldn't  be  quick  enough  in  teaching  him 
how  dull  he  was. 

"  He  calls  you  so  because  he's  done  it  in  his  mind," 
she  said,  "  for  years  and  years.  Your  name  wasn't 
enough.  Farvie  felt  so  —  affectionate." 

The  last  word  sounded  silly  to  her,  and  her  cheeks  were 
so  hot  they  seemed  to  scald  her  eyes  and  melt  out  tears 
in  them.  Jeffrey  gave  her  a  little  quizzical  look,  and 
slipped  his  arm  through  his  father's.  Anne,  at  the  look, 
was  suddenly  relieved.  He  must  have  some  soft  emotions, 
she  thought,  behind  the  scowl. 

"  Don't    you    like    it  ? "    the    colonel    asked    him.     He 

straightened  consciously  under  the  touch  of  his  son's  arm. 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Jeffrey.     "  I  like  it.     Only  you  never 

had.     Except  in  letters.     Come  in  here  and  I'll  tell  you 

what  I'm  going  to  do." 

He  had  piloted  the  colonel  into  the  library,  and  Anne 
and  Lydia  were  disappearing  into  the  dining-room  where 
Mary  Nellen  was  now  supreme.  The  colonel  called  them, 
imperatively.  There  was  such  a  note  of  necessity  in  his 
voice  that  they  felt  sure  he  didn't  know  how  to  deal,  quite 
by  himself,  with  this  unknown  quantity  of  a  son. 

"  Girls,  come  here.     I  have  to  have  my  girls,"  he  said 


THE  PRISONER  57 

to  Jeffrey,  "  when  anything's  going  to  be  talked  over. 
They're  the  head  of  the  house  and  my  head,  too." 

The  girls  came  proudly,  if  unwillingly.  They  knew  the 
scowling  young  man  didn't  need  them,  might  not  want 
them  indeed.  But  they  were  a  part  of  Farvie,  and  he'd 
got  to  accept  them  until  they  found  out,  at  least,  how 
safe  Farvie  was  going  to  be  in  his  hands.  Jeffrey  wasn't 
thinking  of  them  at  all.  He  was  accepting  them,  but  they 
hadn't  any  share  in  his  perspective.  Lydia  felt  they  were 
the  merest  little  dots  there.  She  giggled,  one  brief  note 
to  herself,  and  then  sobered.  She  was  as  likely  to  laugh 
as  to  fume,  and  it  began  to  seem  very  funny  to  her  that  in 
this  drama  of  The  Prisoner's  Return  she  and  Anne  were 
barely  to  have  speaking  parts.  The  colonel  sat  in  his  arm 
chair  at  the  orchard  window,  and  Jeffrey  stood  by  the 
mantel  and  fingered  a  vase.  Lydia,  for  the  first  time  see 
ing  his  hands  with  a  recognising  eye,  was  shocked  by  them. 
They  were  not  gentleman's  hands,  she  thought.  They 
were  worn,  and  had  calloused  stains  and  ill-kept  nails. 

"  I  thought  you'd  like  to  know  as  soon  as  possible  what 
I  mean  to  do,"  he  said,  addressing  his  father. 

"  I'm  glad  you've  got  your  plans,"  his  father  said. 
"  I've  tried  to  make  some,  but  I  couldn't  —  couldn't." 

"  I  want  first  to  find  out  just  how  things  are  here," 
said  Jeffrey.  "  I  want  to  know  how  much  you've  got  to 
live  on,  and  whether  these  girls  have  anything,  and  whether 
they  want  to  stay  on  with  you  or  whether  they're  doing  it 
because  — "  Jeffrey  now  had  a  choking  sense  of  emotions 
too  big  for  him  — "  because  there's  no  other  way  out." 

"  Do  you  mean,"  said  Lydia,  in  a  burst,  before  Anne's 
warning  hand  could  stop  her,  "  you  want  us  to  leave  Far- 
vie?  " 

The  colonel  looked  up  with  a  beseeching  air. 

"  Good  God,  no  !  "  said  Jeffrey  irritably.     "  I  only  want 


58  THE  PRISONER 

to  know  the  state  of  things  here.  So  I  can  tell  what  to 
do." 

The  colonel  had  got  hold  of  himself,  and  straightened 
in  his  chair.  The  girls  knew  that  motion.  It  meant, 
"  Come,  come,  you  derelict  old  body.  Get  into  form." 

"  I've  tried  to  write  you  fully,"  he  said.  "  I  hoped 
I  gave  you  a  —  a  picture  of  the  way  we  lived." 

"  You  did.  You  have,"  said  Jeffrey,  still  with  that  air 
of  getting  nowhere  and  being  greatly  irritated  by  it. 
"  But  how  could  I  know  how  much  these  girls  are  sacrific- 
ing?  " 

"  Sacrificing? "  repeated  the  colonel  helplessly,  and 
Lydia  was  on  the  point  of  another  explosion  when  Jeffrey 
himself  held  up  his  hand  to  her. 

"  Wait,"  he  said.  "  Let  me  think.  I  don't  know  how  to 
get  on  with  people.  They  only  make  me  mad." 

That  put  a  different  face  on  it.  Anne  knew  what  he 
meant.  Here  he  was,  he  for  whom  they  had  meant  to  erect 
arches  of  welcome,  floored  in  a  moment  by  the  perplexities 
of  family  life. 

"  Of  course,"  said  Anne.  She  often  said  "  of  course  " 
to  show  her  sympathy.  "  You  tell  it  your  own  way." 

"  Ah ! "  said  Jeffrey,  with  a  breath  of  gratitude. 
"  Now  you're  talking.  Don't  you  see  — "  he  faced  Anne 
as  the  only  person  present  whose  emotions  weren't  likely 
to  get  the  upper  hand  — "  don't  you  see  I've  got  to  know 
how  father's  fixed  before  I  make  any  plans  for  myself?  " 

Anne  nodded. 

"  We  live  pretty  simply,"  she  said,  "  but  we  can  live. 
I  keep  the  accounts.  I  can  tell  you  how  much  we  spend." 

The  colonel  had  got  hold  of  himself  now. 

"  I  have  twelve  hundred  a  year,"  he  said.  "  We  do  very 
well  on  that.  I  don't  actually  know  how,  except  that  Anne 
is  such  a  good  manager.  She  and  Lydia  have  earned  quite 


THE  PRISONER  59 

a  little,  dancing,  but  I  always  insisted  on  their  keeping 
that  for  their  own  use." 

Here  Jeffrey  looked  at  Anne  and  found  her  pinker  than 
she  had  been.  Anne  was  thinking  she  rather  wished  she 
had  not  been  so  free  with  her  offer  of  accounts. 

"  Dancing,"  said  he.  "  Yes.  You  wrote  me.  Do  you 
like  to  dance?  " 

He  had  turned  upon  Lydia. 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  she.  "  It's  heavenly.  Anne  doesn't. 
Except  when  she's  teaching  children." 

"What  made  you  learn  dancing?  "  he  asked  Anne. 

"  We  wanted  to  do  something,"  she  said  guiltily.  She 
was  afraid  her  tongue  was  going  to  betray  her  and  tell  the 
story  of  the  lean  year  after  their  mother  died  when  they 
found  out  that  mother  had  lived  a  life  of  magnificent  de 
ception  as  to  the  ease  of  housekeeping  on  twelve  hundred 
a  year. 

"Yes,"  said  Jeffrey,  "but  dancing?  Why'd  you  pick 
out  that?" 

"  We  couldn't  do  anything  else,"  said  Lydia  impatiently. 
"  Anne  and  I  don't  know  anything  in  particular."  She 
thought  he  might  have  been  clever  enough  to  see  that,  while 
too  tactful  to  betray  it.  "  But  we  look  nice  —  together 
— and  anybody  can  dance." 

"  Oh !  "  said  Jeffrey.  His  eyes  had  a  shade  less  of  grav 
ity,  but  he  kept  an  unmoved  seriousness  of  tone. 

"  About  our  living  with  Farvie,"  said  Anne.  "  I  can 
see  you'd  want  to  know." 

"  Yes,"  said  he,  "  I  do." 

"  We  love  to,"  said  Anne.  "  We  don't  know  what  we 
should  do  if  Farvie  turned  us  out." 

"  My  dear !  "  from  the  colonel. 

"  Why,  he's  our  father,"  said  Lydia,  in  a  burst.  "  He's 
just  as  much  our  father  as  he  is  yours." 


60  THE  PRISONER 

"  Good !  "  said  Jeffrey.  His  voice  had  warmed  percep 
tibly.  "  Good  for  you.  That's  what  I  thought." 

"  If  you'd  rather  not  settle  down  here,"  said  his  father, 
in  a  tone  of  hoping  Jeff  would  like  it  very  much,  "  we  shall 
be  glad  to  let  the  house  again  and  go  anywhere  you  say. 
We've  often  talked  of  it,  the  girls  and  I." 

Jeffrey  did  not  thank  them  for  that,  or  seem  to  hear  it 
even. 

"  I  want,"  said  he,  "  to  go  West." 

"  Well,"  said  Farvie,  with  a  determined  cheerfulness, 
"  I  guess  the  girls'll  agree  to  that.  Middle  West?  " 

"  No,"  said  Jeffrey,  "  the  West  —  if  there  is  any  West 
left.  Somewhere  where  there's  space."  His  voice  fell, 
on  that  last  word.  It  held  wonder  even.  Was  there  such 
a  thing,  this  man  of  four  walls  seemed  to  ask,  as  space? 

"  You'd  want  to  go  alone,"  said  Anne  softly.  She  felt 
as  if  she  were  breaking  something  to  Farvie  and  adjuring 
him  to  bear  it. 

"  Yes,"  said  Jeffrey,  in  relief.     "  I've  got  to  go  alone." 

"  My  son  — "  said  the  colonel  and  couldn't  go  on. 
Then  he  did  manage.  "  Aren't  we  going  to  live  to 
gether? " 

"  Not  yet,"  said  Jeffrey.     "  Not  yet." 

The  colonel  had  thought  so  much  about  his  old  age  that 
now  he  was  near  saying :  "  You  know  I  haven't  so  very 
many  years,"  but  he  held  on  to  himself. 

"  He's  got  to  go  alone,"  said  Anne.  "  But  he'll  come 
back." 

"  Yes,"  said  Lydia,  from  the  habit  they  had  learned  of 
heartening  Farvie,  "  he'll  come  back." 

But  she  was  hotly  resolving  that  he  should  learn  his  duty 
and  stay  here.  Let  her  get  a  word  with  him  alone. 

"  What  I'm  going  to  do  out  there  I  don't  know,"  said 
Jeffrey.  "  But  I  am  going  to  work,  and  I'm  going  to  turn 


THE  PRISONER  61 

in  enough  to  keep  you  as  you  ought  to  be.  I  want  to 
stay  here  a  little  while  first." 

The  colonel  was  rejuvenated  by  delight.  Lydia  won 
dered  how  anybody  could  see  that  look  on  his  face  and  not 
try  to  keep  it  there. 

"  I've  got,"  said  Jeffrey,  "  to  write  a  book." 

"  Oh,  my  son,"  said  the  colonel,  "  that's  better  than  I 
hoped.  The  newspapers  have  had  it  all,  how  you've 
changed  the  prison  paper,  and  how  you  built  up  a  scheme  of 
prison  government,  and  I  said  to  myself,  '  When  he  comes 
out,  he'll  write  a  book,  and  good  will  come  of  it,  and  then 
we  shall  see  that,  under  Providence,  my  son  went  to  prison 
that  he  might  do  that.'  " 

He  was  uplifted  with  the  wonder  of  it.  The  girls  felt 
themselves  carried  along  at  an  equal  pace.  This  was  it, 
they  thought.  It  was  a  part  of  the  providences  that  make 
life  splendid.  Jeffrey  had  been  martyred  that  he  might 
do  a  special  work. 

"  Oh,  no,"  said  he,  plainly  bored  by  the  inference. 
"  That's  not  it.  I'm  going  to  write  the  life  of  a  fellow  I 
know." 

"Who  was  he?"  Anne  asked,  with  a  serious  uplift  of 
her  brows. 

"  A  defaulter." 

"  In  the  Federal  Prison?  " 

"  Yes." 


VI 

He  looked  at  them,  quite  unconscious  of  the  turmoil  he 
had  wakened  in  them.  Lydia  was  ready  to  sound  the  top 
note  of  revolt.  Her  thoughts  were  running  a  definite  re 
monstrance  :  "  Write  the  life  of  another  man  when  you 
should  be  getting  your  evidence  together  and  proving  your 
own  innocence  and  the  injustice  of  the  law?  "  Anne  was 
quite  ready  to  believe  there  must  be  a  cogent  reason  for 
writing  the  life  of  his  fellow  criminal,  but  she  wished  it  were 
not  so.  She,  too,  from  long  habit  of  thought,  wanted 
Jeffrey  to  attend  to  his  own  life  now  he  had  a  chance.  The 
colonel,  she  knew,  through  waiting  and  hoping,  had  fallen 
into  an  attitude  of  mind  as  wistful  and  expectant  as  hers 
and  Lydia's.  The  fighting  qualities,  it  seemed,  had  been 
ground  out  of  him.  The  fostering  ones  had  grown  dis 
proportionately,  and  sometimes,  she  was  sure,  they  made 
him  ache,  in  a  dull  way,  with  ruth  for  everybody. 

"  Did  the  man  ask  you  to  write  his  life?  "  he  inquired. 

"No,"  said  Jeffrey.  "I  asked  him  if  I  could.  He 
agreed  to  it.  Said  I  might  use  his  name.  He's  no  family 
to  squirm  under  it." 

"  You  feel  he  was  unjustly  sentenced,"  the  colonel  con 
cluded. 

"  Oh,  no.  He  doesn't  either.  He  mighty  well  deserved 
what  he  got.  Been  better  perhaps  if  he'd  got  more. 
What  I  had  in  mind  was  to  tell  how  a  man  came  to  be  a 
robber." 

Lydia  winced  at  the  word.  Jeffrey  had  been  commonly 

62 


THE  PRISONER  63 

called  a  defaulter,  and  she  was  imperfectly  reconciled  tc 
that:  certainly  not  to  a  branding  more  ruthless  still. 

"  I've  watched  him  a  good  deal,"  said  Jeffrey.  "  We'\e 
had  some  talk  together.  I  can  see  how  he  did  what  he  did, 
and  how  he'd  do  it  again.  It'll  be  a  study  in  criminology." 

"When  does  he  —  come  out?"  Anne  hesitated  over 
this.  She  hardly  knew  a  term  without  offence. 

"  Next  year." 

"  But,"  said  she,  "  you  wouldn't  want  to  publish  a  book 
about  him  and  have  him  live  it  down  ?  " 

"  Why  shouldn't  I  ?  "  asked  Jeffrey,  turning  on  her. 
"  He's  willing." 

"  He  can't  be  willing,"  Lydia  broke  in.  "  It's  fright 
ful." 

"Well,  he  is,"  said  Jeffrey.  "There's  nothing  you 
could  do  to  him  he'd  mind,  if  it  gave  him  good  advertis- 
ing." 

"  What  does  he  want  to  do,"  asked  the  colonel,  "  when 
he  comes  out?  " 

"  Get  into  the  game  again.  Make  big  money.  And  if 
it's  necessary,  steal  it.  Not  that  he  wants  to  bunco. 
He's  had  his  dose.  He's  learned  it  isn't  safe.  But  he'd 
make  some  dashing  coup;  he  couldn't  help  it.  Maybe  he'd 
get  nabbed." 

"  What  a  horrid  person !  "  said  Lydia.  "  How  can  you 
have  anything  to  do  with  him  ?  " 

"  Why,  he's  interesting,"  said  Jeffrey,  in  a  way  she 
found  brutal.  "  He's  a  criminal.  He's  got  outside." 

"  Outside  what?  "  she  persisted. 

"  Law.  And  he  wouldn't  particularly  want  to  get  back, 
except  that  it  pays.  But  I'm  not  concerned  with  what  he 
does  when  he  gets  back.  I  want  to  show  how  it  seemed  to 
him  outside  and  how  he  got  there.  He's  more  picturesque 
than  I  am,  or  I'd  take  myself." 


64  THE  PRISONER 

Blessed  Anne,  who  had  no  grasp,  she  thought,  of  ab 
stract  values,  but  knew  how  to  make  a  man  able  for  his 
work,  met  the  situation  quietly. 

"  You  could  have  the  blue  chamber,  couldn't  he,  Farvie  ? 
and  do  your  writing  there." 

Lydia  flashed  her  a  reproachful  glance.  She  would  have 
scattered  his  papers  and  spilled  the  ink,  rather  than  have 
him  do  a  deed  like  that.  If  he  did  it,  it  was  not  with 
her  good-will.  Jeff  had  drawn  his  frown  the  tighter. 

"  I  don't  know  whether  I  can  do  it,"  he  said.  "  A  man 
has  got  to  know  how  to  write." 

"  You  wrote  some  remarkable  things  for  the  Nestor," 
said  the  colonel,  now  hesitating.  It  had  been  one  of  the 
rules  he  and  the  girls  had  concocted  for  the  treatment  of 
a  returning  prisoner,  never  to  refer  to  stone  walls  and  iron 
bars.  But  surely,  he  felt,  Jeff  needed  encouragement. 

Jeff  was  ruthless. 

"  That  was  all  rot,"  he  said. 

"What  was?"  Lydia  darted  at  him.  "Didn't  you 
mean  what  you  said?  " 

"  It  was  idiotic  for  the  papers  to  take  it  up,"  said 
Jeff.  "They  got  it  all  wrong.  'There's  a  man,'  they 
said,  '  in  the  Federal  Prison,  Jeffrey  Blake,  the  defaulter. 
Very  talented.  Has  revolutionised  the  Nestor,  the  prison 
organ.  Let  him  out,  pardon  him,  simply  because  he  can 
write.'" 

"  As  I  understand,"  said  his  father,  "  you  did  get  the 
name  of  the  paper  changed." 

"  Well,  now,"  said  Jeff,  appealingly,  in  a  candid  way, 
"  what  kind  of  name  was  that  for  a  prison  paper?  Nes 
tor!  '  Who  was  Nestor  ?  '  says  the  man  that's  been  held 
up  in  the  midst  of  his  wine-swilling  and  money-getting. 
Wise  old  man,  he  remembers.  First-class  preacher. 
Turn  on  the  tap  and  he'll  give  you  a  maxim.  *  Gee ! '  says 


THE  PRISONER  65 

he,  *  I  don't  want  advice.     I  know  how  I  got  here,  and  if 
I  ever  get  out,  I'll  see  to  it  I  don't  get  in  again.' ' 

Lydia  found  this  talk  exceedingly  diverting.  She  dis 
approved  of  it.  She  had  wanted  Jeff  to  appear  a  dash 
ing,  large-eyed,  entirely  innocent  young  man,  his  mouth, 
full  of  axioms,  prepared  to  be  the  stay  of  Farvie's  gentle 
years.  But  this  rude  torrent  of  perverse  philosophy  bore 
her  along  and  she  liked  it,  particularly  because  she  felt 
she  should  presently  contradict  and  show  how  much  better 
she  knew  herself.  Anne,  too,  evidently  had  an  unlawful  in 
terest  in  it,  and  wanted  him  to  keep  on  talking.  She  took 
that  transparent  way  of  furthering  the  flow  by  asking  a 
question  she  could  answer  herself. 

"  You  called  it  Prison  Tall:,  didn't  you?  " 
"  Yes,"  said  Jeff.     "  They  called  it  Prison  Talk.19 
"  And  all  our  newspapers   copied  your  articles,"   said 
Anne,  artfully  guiding  him  forward,  "  the  ones  you  called 
'  The  New  Republic.'  " 

"What  d'they  want  to  copy  them  for?"  asked  Jeff. 
"  It  was  a  fool  thing  to  do.  I'd  simply  written  the  let 
ters  to  the  men,  to  ask  'em  if  they  didn't  think  the  very 
devil  of  prison  life  was  that  we  were  outside.  Not  because 
we  were  inside,  shut  up  in  a  jug.  You  could  bear  to  be  in 
a  jug,  if  that  wras  all.  But  you've  got  to  have  ties. 
You've  got  to  have  laws  and  the  whole  framework  that's 
been  built  up  from  the  cave  man.  Or  you're  desperate, 
don't  you  see?  You're  all  alone.  And  a  man  will  do  a 
great  deal  not  to  be  alone.  If  there's  nothing  for  you  to 
do  but  learn  a  trade,  and  be  preached  at  by  Nestor,  and 
say  to  yourself,  '  I'm  outside  ' —  why  there's  the  devil  in 
it." 

He  was  trying  to  convince  them  as  he  had  previously 
convinced  others,  those  others  who  had  lived  with  him  un 
der  the  penal  law.  He  looked  at  Anne  much  as  if  she  were 


66  THE  PRISONER 

a  State  or  Federal  Board  and  incidentally  at  Lydia,  as 
if  he  would  say : 

"  Here's  a  very  young  and  insignificant  criminal.  We'll 
return  to  her  presently.  But  she,  too,  is  going  to  be  con 
vinced." 

"  And  I  don't  say  a  man  hasn't  got  to  be  infernally  mis 
erable  when  he's  working  out  his  sentence.  He  has.  I 
don't  want  you  to  let  up  on  him.  Only  I  don't  want  him 
to  get  punky,  so  he  isn't  fit  to  come  back  when  his  term 
is  over.  I  don't  believe  it's  going  to  do  much  for  him 
merely  to  keep  the  laws  he's  been  chucked  under,  against 
his  will,  though  he's  got  to  keep  'em,  or  they'll  know  the 
reason  why." 

Lydia  wondered  who  They  were.  She  thought  They 
might  be  brutal  wardens  and  assembled  before  her,  in  a  ter 
rifying  battalion,  the  strait- jackets  and  tortures  she'd 
found  in  some  of  the  older  English  novels. 

"  So  I  said  to  the  men :  *  We've  got  to  govern  ourselves. 
We  haven't  got  a  damned  word '  " —  really  abashed  he 
looked  at  Anne  — "  I  beg  your  pardon.  *  We  haven't  got 
a  word  to  say  in  this  government  we're  under ;  but  say  we 
have.  Say  the  only  thing  we  can  do  is  to  give  no  trouble, 
fine  ourselves,  punish  ourselves  if  we  do.  The  worst  thing 
that  can  happen  to  us,'  I  said,  6  is  to  hate  law.  Well,  the 
best  law  we've  got  is  prison  law.  It's  the  only  law  that's 
going  to  touch  us  now.  Let's  love  it  as  if  it  were  our 
mother.  And  if  it  isn't  tough  enough,  let's  make  it 
tougher.  Let's  vote  on  it,  and  publish  our  votes  in  this 
paper.'  " 

"  I  was  surprised,"  said  his  father,  "  that  so  much  plain 
speaking  was  allowed." 

"  Advertising !  Of  course  they  allowed  us,"  said  Jeff. 
"  It  advertised  us  outside.  Advertised  the  place.  Of 
ficials  got  popular.  Inside  conduct  went  up  a  hundred 


THE  PRISONER  67 

per  cent,  just  as  it  would  in  school.  Men  are  only  boys. 
As  soon  as  the  fellows  got  it  into  their  heads  we  were  try 
ing  to  work  out  a  republic  in  a  jail,  they  were  possessed 
by  it.  I  wish  you  could  see  the  letters  that  were  sent  in  to 
the  paper.  You  couldn't  publish  'em,  some  of  'em.  Too 
illiterate.  But  they  showed  you  what  was  inside  the  fel 
lows.  Sometimes  they  were  as  smug  as  a  prayer-meeting." 

"  Did  this  man  write?  "  Lydia  asked  scornfully,  with  a 
distaste  she  didn't  propose  to  lessen.  "  The  one  you're 
going  to  do  the  book  about  ?  " 

"  Oh,  he's  a  crook,"  said  Jeff  indifferently.  "  Crook  all 
through.  If  we'd  been  trying  to  build  up  a  monarchy  in 
stead  of  a  republic  he'd  have  hatched  up  a  scheme  for  loot 
ing  the  crown  jewels.  Or  if  we'd  been  founding  a  true  and 
only  church,  he'd  have  suggested  a  trick  for  melting  the 
communion  plate." 

"  And  you  want  to  write  his  life ! "  said  Lydia's  look. 

But  Jeff  cared  nothing  about  her  look.  He  was,  with 
a  retrospective  eye,  regarding  the  work  he  had  been  doing, 
work  that  had  perhaps  saved  his  reason  as  well  as  bought 
his  freedom.  Now  he  was  spreading  it  out  and  letting 
them  consider  it,  not  for  praise,  but  because  he  trusted 
them.  He  felt  a  few  rivets  giving  in  the  case  he  had 
hardened  about  himself  for  so  long  a  time.  He  thought  he 
had  got  very  hard  indeed,  and  was  even  willing  to  invite 
a  knock  or  two,  to  test  his  induration.  But  there  was 
something  curiously  softening  in  this  little  group  sitting 
in  the  shade  of  the  pleasant  room  while  the  sunshine  out 
side  played  upon  growing  leaves.  He  was  conscious,  won- 
deringly,  that  they  all  loved  him  very  much.  His  father's 
letters  had  told  him  that.  It  seemed  simple  and  natural, 
too,  that  these  young  women,  who  were  not  his  sisters  and 
who  gave  him,  in  his  rough  habit  of  life,  a  curious  pain 
with  their  delicacy  and  softness  —  it  seemed  natural 


68  THE  PRISONER 

enough  that  they  should,  in  a  way  not  understood,  belong 
to  him.  He  had  got  gradually  accustomed  to  it,  from 
their  growing  up  in  his  father's  house  from  little  girls  to 
girls  dancing  themselves  into  public  favour,  and  then, 
again,  he  had  been  living  "  outside  "  where  ordinary  con 
ventions  did  not  obtain.  He  had  got  used  to  many  things 
in  his  solitary  thoughts  that  were  never  tested  by  other 
minds  in  familiar  intercourse.  The  two  girls  belonged 
there  among  accepted  things.  He  looked  up  suddenly  at 
his  father,  and  asked  the  question  they  had  least  of  all  ex 
pected  to  hear : 

"Where's  Esther?" 

The  two  girls  made  a  movement  to  go,  but  he  glanced 
at  them  frowningly,  as  if  they  mustn't  break  up  the  talk 
at  this  moment,  and  they  hesitated,  hand  in  hand. 

"  She's  living  here,"  said  the  colonel,  "  with  her  grand 
mother." 

"  Has  that  old  harpy  been  over  lately?  " 

"  Madame  Seattle?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  Not  to  my  knowledge." 

Anne  and  Lydia  exchanged  looks.  Madame  Beattie  was 
a  familiar  name  to  them,  but  they  had  never  heard  she  was 
a  harpy. 

"Was  she  Esther's  aunt?"  Lydia  inquired,  really  to 
give  the  talk  a  jog.  She  was  accustomed  to  shake  up  her 
watch  when  it  hesitated. 

"  Great-aunt,"  said  Jeffrey.  "  Step-sister  to  Esther's 
grandmother.  She  must  be  sixty-five  where  grandmother's 
a  good  ten  years  older." 

"  She  sang,"  said  the  colonel,  forgetting,  as  he  often  did, 
they  seemed  so  young,  that  everybody  in  America  must 
at  least  have  heard  tradition  of  Madame  Beattie's  voice. 
"  She  lived  abroad." 


THE  PRISONER  69 

"  She  had  a  ripping  voice,"  said  Jeff.  "  When  she  was 
young,  of  course.  That  wasn't  all.  There  was  something 
about  her  that  took  them.  But  she  lost  her  voice,  and  she 
married  Beattie,  and  he  died.  Then  she  came  back  here 
and  hunted  up  Esther." 

His  face  settled  into  lines  of  sombre  thought,  puzzled 
thought,  it  seemed  to  Anne.  But  to  Lydia  it  looked  as  if 
this  kidnapping  of  Madame  Beattie  from  the  past  and 
thrusting  her  into  the  present  discussion  was  only  a  pre 
text  for  talking  about  Esther.  Of  course,  she  knew,  he 
was  wildly  anxious  to  enter  upon  the  subject,  and  there 
might  be  pain  enough  in  it  to  keep  him  from  approaching 
it  suddenly.  Esther  might  be  a  burning  coal.  Madame 
Beattie  was  the  safe  holder  he  caught  up  to  keep  his  fingers 
from  it.  But  he  sounded  now  as  if  he  were  either  much 
absorbed  in  Madame  Beattie  or  very  wily  in  his  hiding  be 
hind  her. 

"  I've  often  wondered  if  she  came  back.  I've  thought 
she  might  easily  have  settled  on  Esther  and  sucked  her  dry. 
No  news  of  her?  " 

"  No  news,"  said  the  colonel.  "  It's  years  since  she's 
been  here.  Not  since  —  then." 

"  No,"  said  Jeff.  There  was  a  new  line  of  bitter  amuse 
ment  near  his  mouth.  "  I  know  the  date  of  her  going,  to 
a  dot.  The  day  I  was  arrested  she  put  for  New  York. 
Next  week  she  sailed  for  Italy."  But  if  Lydia  was  going 
to  feel  more  of  her  hot  reversals  in  the  face  of  his  calling 
plain  names,  she  found  him  cutting  them  short  with  an 
other  question:  "  Seen  Esther?  " 

"  No,"  said  the  colonel. 

A  red  spot  had  sprung  into  his  cheek.  He  looked  har 
assed.  Lydia  sprang  into  the  arena,  to  save  him,  and  be 
cause  she  was  the  one  who  had  the  latest  news. 

"  I  have,"  she  said.     "  I've  seen  her." 


70  THE  PRISONER 

She  knew  what  grave  surprise  was  in  the  colonel's  face. 
But  no  such  thing  appeared  in  Jeff's.  He  only  turned  to 
her  as  if  she  were  the  next  to  be  interrogated. 

"  How  does  she  look?  "  he  asked. 

The  complete  vision  of  her  stretched  at  ease  eating  fruit 
out  of  a  silver  dish,  as  if  she  had  arranged  herself  to  rouse 
the  most  violent  emotions  in  a  little  seething  sister,  stirred 
Lydia  to  the  centre.  But  not  for  a  million  dollars,  she 
reflected,  in  a  comparison  clung  to  faithfully,  would  she  tell 
how  beautiful  Esther  appeared  to  even  the  hostile  eye. 

"  She  looked,"  said  she  coldly,  "  perfectly  well." 

"Where  d'you  see  her?  "  Jeff  asked. 

"  I  went  over,"  said  Lydia.  Her  colour  was  now  high. 
She  looked  as  if  you  might  select  some  rare  martyrdom 
for  her  —  quartering  or  gridironing  according  to  the  old 
est  recipes  —  and  you  couldn't  make  her  tell  less  than  the 
truth,  because  only  the  truth  would  contribute  to  the  down 
fall  of  Esther.  "  I  went  in  without  ringing,  because  Far- 
vie'd  been  before  and  they  wouldn't  let  him  in." 

"  Lydia !  "  the  colonel  called  remindingly. 

"  I  found  her  reading  —  and  eating."  Lydia  hadn't 
known  she  could  be  so  hateful.  Still  she  was  telling  the 
exact  truth.  "  We  talked  a  few  minutes  and  I  came 
away." 

"  Did  she  — "  at  last  suddenly  and  painfully  thrown  out 
of  his  nonchalant  run  of  talk,  he  stopped. 

"  She's  a  horrid  woman,"  said  Lydia,  crimson  with  her 
own  daring,  and  got  up  and  ran  out  of  the  room. 

Anne  looked  appealingly  at  Jeff,  in  a  way  of  begging 
him  to  remember  how  young  Lydia  was,  and  perhaps  how 
spoiled.  But  he  wasn't  disturbed.  He  only  said  to  his 
father  in  a  perfectly  practical  way: 

"  Women  never  did  like  her,  you  know." 

So  Anne  got  up  and  went  out,  thinking  it  was  the  moment 


THE  PRISONER  71 

for  him  and  his  father  to  pace  along  together  on  this  road 
of  masculine  understanding.  She  found  Lydia  by  the  din 
ing-room  window,  savagely  drying  her  cheeks.  Lydia 
looked  as  if  she  had  cried  hard  and  scrubbed  the  tears  off 
and  cried  again,  there  was  such  wilful  havoc  in  the  pink 
smoothness  of  her  face. 

"  Isn't  he  hateful?  "  she  asked  Anne,  with  an  incredulous 
spite  in  her  voice.  "  How  could  anybody  that  belonged 
to  Farvie  be  so  rough?  I  can't  endure  him,  can  you?  " 

Anne  looked  distressed.  When  there  were  disagree 
ments  and  cross-purposes  they  made  her  almost  ill.  She 
would  go  about  with  a  physical  nausea  upon  her,  wishing 
the  world  could  be  kind. 

"  But  he's  only  just  —  free,"  she  said. 

They  were  still  making  a  great  deal  of  that  word,  she 
and  Lydia.  It  seemed  the  top  of  earthly  fortune  to  be 
free,  and  abysmal  misery  to  have  missed  it. 

"  I  can't  help  it,"  said  Lydia.  "  What  does  he  want  to 
act  so  for?  Why  does  he  talk  about  such  places,  as  if 
anybody  could  be  in  them?  " 

"Prisons?" 

"  Yes.  And  talking  about  going  West  as  if  Farvie 
hadn't  just  lived  to  get  him  back.  And  about  her  as  if 
she  wasn't  any  different  from  what  he  expected  and  you 
couldn't  ask  her  to  be  anything  else." 

"  But  she's  his  wife,"  said  Anne  gently.  "  I  suppose  he 
loves  her.  Let's  hope  he  does." 

"  You  can,  if  you  want  to,"  said  Lydia,  with  a  wet  hand 
kerchief  making  another  renovating  attack  on  her  face. 
"  I  sha'n't.  She's  a  horrid  woman." 

They  parted  then,  for  their  household  deeds,  but  all 
through  the  morning  Lydia  had  a  fire  of  curiosity  burning 
in  her  to  know  what  Jeff  was  doing.  He  ought,  she  knew, 
to  be  sitting  by  Farvie,  keeping  him  company,  in  a  pas- 


72  THE  PRISONER 

sionate  way,  to  make  up  for  the  years.  The  years  seemed 
sometimes  like  a  colossal  mistake  in  nature  that  every 
body  had  got  to  make  up  for  —  make  up  to  everybody  else. 
Certainly  she  and  Anne  and  Farvie  had  got  to  make  up  to 
the  innocent  Jeff.  And  equally  they  had  all  got  to  make 
up  to  Farvie.  But  going  once  noiselessly  through  the 
hall,  she  glanced  in  and  saw  the  colonel  sitting  alone  bv 
the  window,  Mary  Nellen's  Virgil  in  his  hand.  He  was 
well  back  from  the  glass,  and  Lydia  guessed  that  it  was 
because  he  wanted  to  command  the  orchard  and  not  him 
self  be  seen.  She  ran  up  to  her  own  room  and  also  looked. 
There  he  was,  Jeff,  striding  round  in  the  shadow  of  the 
brick  wall,  walking  like  a  man  with  so  many  laps  to  do 
before  night.  Sometimes  he  squared  his  shoulders  and 
walked  hard,  but  as  if  he  knew  he  was  going  to  get  there  — 
the  mysterious  place  for  which  he  was  bound.  Sometimes 
his  shoulders  sagged,  and  he  had  to  drive  himself.  Lydia 
felt,  in  her  throat,  the  aching  misery  of  youth  and  wondered 
if  she  had  got  to  cry  again,  and  if  this  hateful,  wholly  un 
satisfactory  creature  was  going  to  keep  her  crying.  As 
she  watched,  he  stopped,  and  then  crossed  the  orchard 
green  directly  toward  her.  She  stood  still,  looking  down 
on  him  fascinated,  her  breath  trembling,  as  if  he  might 
glance  up  and  ask  her  what  business  she  had  staring  down 
there,  spying  on  him  while  he  did  those  mysterious  laps  he 
was  condemned  to,  to  make  up  perhaps  for  the  steps  he  had 
not  taken  on  free  ground  in  all  the  years. 

"  Got  a  spade?  "  she  heard  him  call. 

"  Yes."     It  was  Anne's  voice.     "  Here  it  is." 

"  Why,  it's  new,"  Lydia  heard  him  say. 

He  was  under  her  window  now,  and  she  could  not  see 
him  without  putting  her  head  over  the  sill. 

"  Yes,"  said  Anne.     "  I  went  down  town  and  bought  it." 

Anne's    voice    sounded    particularly    satisfied.     Lydia 


THE  PRISONER  73 

knew  that  tone.  It  said  Anne  had  been  able  to  accomplish 
some  fit  and  clever  deed,  to  please.  It  was  as  if  a  foun 
tain,  bubbling  over,  had  said,  "  Have  I  given  you  a  drink, 
you  dog,  you  horse,  you  woman  with  the  bundle  and  the 
child?  Marvellous  lucky  I  must  be.  I'll  bubble  some 
more." 

Jeff  himself  might  have  understood  that  in  Anne,  for  he 
said: 

"  I  bet  you  brought  it  home  in  your  hand." 

"  No  takers,"  said  Anne.     "  I  bet  I  did." 

"That  heavy  spade?" 

"  It  wasn't  heavy." 

"  You  thought  I'd  be  spading  to  keep  from  growing 
dotty.  Good  girl.  Give  it  here." 

"  But,  Jeff!  "  Anne's  voice  flew  after  him  as  he  went. 
Lydia  felt  herself  grow  hot,  knowing  Anne  had  taken 
the  big  first  step  that  had  looked  so  impossible  when  they 
saw  him.  She  had  called  him  Jeff.  "  Jeff,  where  are  you 
going  to  spade?  " 

"  Up,"  said  Jeff.  "  I  don't  care  where.  You  always 
spade  up,  don't  you?  " 

In  a  minute  Lydia  saw  Anne,  with  the  sun  on  her  brown 
hair,  the  colonel,  and  Jeff  with  the  shining  spade  like  a  new 
sort  of  war  weapon,  going  forth  to  spade  "  up  ".  Evi 
dently  Anne  intended  to  have  no  spading  at  random  in  a 
fair  green  orchard.  She  was  one  of  the  conservers  of  the 
earth,  a  thrifty  housewife  who  would  have  all  things  well 
done.  They  looked  happily  intent,  the  three,  going  out  to 
their  breaking  ground.  Lydia  felt  the  tempest  in  her 
going  down,  and  she  wished  she  were  with  them.  But 
her  temper  shut  her  out.  She  felt  like  a  little  cloud  driven 
by  some  capricious  wind  to  darken  the  face  of  earth, 
and  not  by  her  own  willingness. 

She  went  down  to  the  noon  dinner  quite  chastened,  with 


74  THE  PRISONER 

the  expression  Anne  knew,  of  having  had  a  temper  and  got 
over  it.  The  three  looked  as  if  they  had  had  a  beautiful 
time,  Lydia  thought  humbly.  The  colour  was  in  their 
faces.  Farvie  talked  of  seed  catalogues,  and  it  became 
evident  that  Jeff  was  spading  up  the  old  vegetable  garden 
on  the  orchard's  edge.  Anne  had  a  soft  pink  in  her  cheeks. 
They  had  all,  it  appeared,  begun  a  pleasant  game. 

Lydia  kept  a  good  deal  to  herself  that  day.  She  ac 
cepted  a  task  from  Anne  of  looking  over  table  linen  and 
lining  drawers  with  white  paper.  Mary  Nellen  was  ex 
cused  from  work,  and  sat  at  upper  windows  making  a  hum 
of  study  like  good  little  translating  bees.  Anne  went  back 
and  forth  from  china  closet  to  piles  of  dishes  left  ready 
washed  by  Mary  Nellen,  and  the  colonel,  in  the  library, 
drowsed  off  the  morning's  work.  Lydia  had  a  sense  of 
peaceful  tasks  and  tranquil  pauses.  Her  own  pulses  had 
quieted  with  the  declining  sun,  and  it  seemed  as  if  they 
might  all  be  settling  into  a  slow-moving  ease  of  life  at 
last. 

"  Where  is  he  ?  "  suddenly  she  said  to  Anne,  in  the  midst 
of  their  weaving  the  household  rhythm. 

"  Jeff?  "  asked  Anne,  not  stopping.  "  He's  spading  in 
the  garden." 

"  Don't  you  want  to  go  out  ?  "  asked  Lydia.  She  felt 
as  if  they  had  on  their  hands,  not  a  liberated  prisoner,  but 
a  prisoner  still  bound  by  their  fond  expectations  of  him. 
He  must  be  beguiled,  distracted  from  the  memory  of  his 
broken  fetters. 

"  No,"  said  Anne.  "  He'll  be  tired  enough  to  sleep  to 
night." 

"Didn't  he  sleep  last  night?"  Lydia  asked,  that  old 
ache  beginning  again  in  her. 

"  I  shouldn't  think  so,"  said  Anne,     "  But  he's  well  tired 


THE  PRISONER  75 

And  if  was  Lydia  that  night  at  ten  who  heard  long 
breaths  from  the  little  room  when  she  went  softly  up  the 
back  stairs  to  speak  to  Mary  Nellen.  There  was  a  light 
on  his  table.  The  door  was  open.  He  sat,  his  back  to 
her,  his  arms  on  the  table,  his  head  on  his  arms.  She 
heard  the  long  labouring  breaths  of  a  creature  who  could 
have  sobbed  if  he  had  not  kept  a  heavy  hand  on  himself. 
They  were,  Lydia  thought,  like  the  breaths  of  a  dear  dog 
she  had  known  who  used  to  put  his  nose  to  the  crack  of  the 
shut  door  and  sigh  into  it,  "  Please  let  me  in."  It  seemed 
to  her  acutely  sensitive  mind,  prepared  like  a  chemical 
film  to  take  every  impression  Jeff  could  cast,  as  if  he  were 
lying  prone  at  the  door  of  the  cruel  beauty  and  breathing, 
"  Please  let  me  in."  She  wanted  to  put  her  hands  on  the 
bowed  head  and  comfort  him.  Now  she  knew  how  Anne 
felt,  Anne,  the  little  mother  heart,  who  dragged  up  com 
passion  from  the  earth  and  brought  it  down  from  the  sky 
for  unfriended  creatures.  And  yet  all  the  solace  Lydia 
had  to  offer  was  a  bitter  one.  She  would  only  have  said : 

"  Don't  cry  for  her.  She  isn't  worth  it.  She's  a  hate 
ful  woman," 


VII 

Madame  Beattie  was  near,  and  had  that  morning  tele 
graphed  Esther.  The  message  was  explicit,  and,  in  the 
point  of  affection,  diffuse.  Old-fashioned,  too :  she  longed 
to  hold  her  niece  in  her  arms.  A  more  terrified  young 
woman  could  not  easily  have  been  come  on  that  day  than 
Esther  Blake,  as  she  opened  the  envelope,  afraid  of  detec 
tives,  of  reporters,  of  anything  connected  with  a  husband 
lately  returned  from  jail.  But  this  was  worse  than  she 
could  have  guessed.  In  face  of  an  ordinary  incursion  she 
might  shut  herself  up  in  her  room  and  send  Sophy  to  tell 
smooth  fictions  at  the  door.  Reporters  could  hardly  get 
at  her,  and  her  husband  himself,  if  he  should  try,  could  pre 
sumably  be  routed.  Aunt  Patricia  Beattie  was  another 
matter.  Esther  was  so  panicky  that  she  ran  upstairs  with 
the  telegram  and  tapped  at  grandmother's  door.  Rhoda 
Knox  came  in  answer.  She  was  a  large  woman  of  a  fine 
presence,  red  cheekbones  with  high  lights,  and  smooth  black 
hair  brushed  glossy  and  carefully  coiled.  She  was  grand 
mother's  attendant,  helplessly  hated  by  grandmother  but 
professionally  unmoved  by  it,  a  general  who  carried  on  in 
tricate  calculations  to  avoid  what  she  called  "  steps."  In 
the  matter  of  steps,  she  laid  bonds  on  high  and  low.  A 
deed  that  would  have  taken  her  five  minutes  to  do  she 
passed  on  to  the  next  available  creature,  even  if  it  re 
quired  twenty  minutes'  planning  to  hocus  him  into  accept 
ing  it.  She  had  the  intent  look  of  the  schemer:  yet  she 
was  one  who  meant  well  and  simply  preferred  by  nature  to 

76 


THE  PRISONER  77 

be  stationary.  Grandmother  feared  her  besides  hating 
her,  though  loving  the  order  she  brought  to  pass. 

Esther  slipped  by  her,  and  went  to  the  bed  where  grand 
mother  was  lying  propped  on  pillows,  an  exceedingly 
small  old  woman  who  was  even  to  life-long  friends  an 
enigma  presumably  without  an  answer.  She  had  the  remote 
air  of  hating  her  state  of  age,  which  did  not  seem  a  natural 
necessity  but  a  unique  calamity,  a  trap  sprung  on  her  and, 
after  the  nature  of  traps,  most  unexpectedly.  When  she 
was  young  she  had  believed  the  old  walked  into  the  trap 
deliberately  because  it  was  provided  on  a  path  they  were 
tired  of.  But  she  wasn't  tired,  and  yet  the  trap  had 
clutched  her.  She  had  a  small  face  beautifully  wrought 
upon  by  lines,  as  if  she  had  given  a  cunning  artificer  the 
preparation  of  a  mask  she  was  paying  dearly  for  and  yet 
didn't  prize  at  all.  An  old-fashioned  nightcap  with  a 
frill  covered  her  head,  and  she  had  tied  herself  so  tightly 
into  it  that  he  must  be  a  bold  adventurer  who  would  get 
at  the  thoughts  inside.  Her  little  hands  were  shaded  by 
fine  frills.  She  looked,  on  the  whole,  like  a  disenchanted 
lingerer  in  the  living  world,  a  useless  creature  for  whom 
fostering  had  done  so  much  that  you  might  ask :  "  What 
is  this  illustration  of  a  clean  old  woman  ?  What  is  it  for  ? 
What  does  it  teach?" 

Esther,  with  her  telegram,  stood  beside  the  bed. 

"  Grandmother,"  said  she,  in  the  perfect  tone  she  used 
toward  her,  clear  and  not  too  loud,  "  Aunt  Patricia  Beat- 
tie  is  coming." 

Grandmother  lifted  large  black  eyes  dulled  by  the 
broken  surface  of  age,  to  Esther's  face.  There  was  no 
envy  in  the  gaze  but  wonder  chiefly. 

"  Is  that  youth?  "  the  eyes  inquired.  "  Useless,  not  es 
pecially  admirable  —  but  curious." 

Esther,  waiting  there  for  recognition,  felt  the  discom- 


78  THE  PRISONER 

fort  grandmother  always  seemed  to  stir  into  her  mood. 
Her  rose-touched  skin  was  a  little  more  suffused,  though 
not  beyond  a  furtherance  of  beauty. 

"  Aunt  Patricia  is  coming,"  she  repeated.  "  When  I 
heard  from  her  last  she  was  in  Poland." 

"  Her  name  is  Martha,"  said  grandmother.  "  Don't 
let  her  come  in  here."  She  had  a  surprising  voice,  of  a 
barbaric  quality,  the  ring  of  metal.  Hearing  it  you  were 
mentally  translated  for  an  instant,  and  thought  of  far- 
off,  palm-girt  islands  and  savages  beating  strange  instru 
ments  and  chanting  to  them  uncouth  syllables.  "  Rhoda 
Knox,  don't  let  her  get  up  here." 

"How  can  I  keep  her  out?"  asked  Esther.  "You'll 
have  to  see  her.  I  can't  live  down  there  alone  with  her. 
I  couldn't  make  her  happy." 

A  satirical  light  shivered  across  grandmother's  eyes. 

"  Where  is  your  husband?  "  she  inquired.     "  Here?  " 

"  Here?  "  repeated  Esther.     "  In  this  house?  " 

"  Yes." 

"  He  isn't  coming  here.  It  would  be  very  painful  for 
him." 

The  time  had  been  when  grandmother,  newer  to  life, 
would  have  asked,  "Why?"  But  she  knew  Esther 
minutely  now ;  all  her  turns  of  speech  and  habits  of  thought 
were  as  a  tale  long  told.  Once  it  had  been  a  mildly  fas 
cinating  game  to  see  through  what  Esther  said  to  what  she 
really  meant.  It  was  easy,  once  you  had  the  clue,  too 
easy,  all  certainties,  with  none  of  the  hazards  of  a  game. 
Esther,  she  knew,  lived  with  a  lovely  ideal  of  herself.  The 
imaginary  Esther  was  all  sympathy ;  she  was  even  self-sac 
rificing.  No  shining  quality  lay  in  the  shop  window  of  the 
world's  praise  but  the  real  Esther  snatched  it  and  adorned 
herself  with  it.  The  Esther  that  was  talked  in  the  lan 
guage  of  the  Esther  that  ought  to  be.  If  she  didn't  want 


THE  PRISONER  79 

to  see  you,  she  told  you  it  would  be  inconvenient  for  you 
to  come.  If  she  wanted  to  tell  you  somebody  had  praised 
the  rose  of  her  cheek,  she  told  you  she  was  so  touched  by 
everybody's  goodness  in  loving  to  give  pleasure;  then  she 
proved  her  point  by  na'ive  repetition  of  the  pretty  speech. 
Sometimes  she  even,  in  the  humility  of  the  other  Esther, 
deprecated  the  flattery  as  insincere ;  but  not  before  she  had 
told  you  what  it  was. 

"  I  haven't  seen  her  since  —  I  haven't  seen  her  for 
years,"  she  said.  "  She  wasn't  happy  with  me  then. 
She'll  be  much  less  likely  to  be  now." 

"  Older,"  said  grandmother.  "  More  difficult.  Keep 
her  out  of  here." 

It  seemed  to  Esther  there  was  no  sympathy  for  her  in 
the  world,  even  if  she  got  drum  and  fife  and  went  out  to 
beat  it  up.  One  empty  victory  she  had  achieved:  grand 
mother  had  at  least  spoken  to  her.  Sometimes  she  turned 
her  face  to  the  wall  and  lay  there,  not  even  a  ruffle  quiver 
ing.  Esther  moved  away,  but  Rhoda  Knox  was  before 
hand  with  her.  Rhoda  held  a  letter. 

"  Mrs.  Blake,  could  you  take  this  down?  "  she  asked,  in 
a  faultless  manner,  and  yet  implacably.  "  And  let  it  go 
out  when  somebody  is  going?  " 

Esther  accepted  the  letter  helplessly.  She  knew  how 
Rhoda  sat  planning  to  get  her  errands  done.  Yet  there 
was  never  any  reason  why  you  should  not  do  them.  She 
ran  downstairs  carrying  the  letter,  hating  it  because  it 
had  got  itself  carried  against  her  will,  and  went  at  once 
to  the  telephone.  And  there  her  voice  had  more  than 
its  natural  appeal,  because  she  was  so  baffled  and  angry 
and  pitied  herself  so  much. 

"  Could  you  come  in  ?  I'm  bothered.  Yes,"  in  answer 
to  his  question,  "  in  trouble,  I'm  afraid." 

Alston  Choate  came  at  once;  her  voice  must  have  told 


80  THE  PRISONER 

him  moving  things,  for  he  was  full  of  warm  concern. 
Esther  met  him  with  a  dash  of  agitation  admirably  con 
trolled.  She  was  not  the  woman  to  alarm  a  man  at  the 
start.  Let  him  get  into  a  run,  let  him  forget  the  spec 
tators  by  the  way,  and  even  the  terrifying  goal  where  he 
might  be  crowned  victor  even  before  he  chose.  Only  whip 
up  his  blood  until  the  guidance  of  them  both  was  hers,  not 
his.  So  he  felt  at  once  her  need  of  him  and  at  the  same 
time  her  distance  from  him.  It  was  a  wonderfully  vivify 
ing  call :  nothing  to  fear  from  her,  but  exhilarating  feats  to 
be  undertaken  for  her  sake. 

"  I'm  frightened  at  last,"  she  told  him.  That  she  was 
a  brave  woman  the  woman  she  had  created  for  her  double 
had  persuaded  her.  "  I  had  to  speak  to  somebody." 

Choate  looked  really  splendid  in  the  panoply  of  his  sim 
plicity  and  restraints  and  courtesy.  A  man  can  be  im 
posing  in  spite  of  a  broken  nose. 

"  What's  gone  wrong?  "  he  asked. 

"  Aunt  Patricia  is  coming." 

Choate  had  quite  forgotten  Aunt  Patricia.  She  had 
been  too  far  in  the  depths  of  Poland  for  Esther  to  sum 
mon  up  her  shade.  Possibly  it  was  a  dangerous  shade 
to  summon,  lest  the  substance  follow.  But  now  she 
sketched  Aunt  Patricia  with  hesitating  candour,  but  so 
that  he  lost  none  of  her  undesirability,  and  he  listened 
with  a  painstaking  courtesy. 

"You  say  you're  afraid  of  her?"  he  said,  at  the  end. 
"  Let  her  come.  She  may  not  want  to  stay." 

"  She  is  so  —  different,"  faltered  Esther.  She  looked 
at  him  with  humid  eyes.  It  was  apparent  that  Aunt 
Patricia  was  different  in  a  way  not  to  be  commended. 

Now  Choate  thought  he  saw  how  it  was. 

"  You  mean  she's  been  banging  about  Europe,"  he  said, 
"  living  in  pensions,  trailing  round  with  second-rate  pro- 


THE  PRISONER  81 

fessionals.     I   get   that   idea,   at   least.     Am    I   right?" 

"  She's  frightfully  bohemian,  of  course,"  said  Esther. 
"  Yes,  that's  what  I  did  mean." 

"  But  she's  not  young,  you  know,"  said  Choate,  in  an 
indulgent  kindliness  Esther  was  quite  sure  he  kept  for  her 
alone.  "  She  won't  be  very  rackety.  People  don't  want 
the  same  things  after  they're  sixty." 

"  She  smokes,"  said  Esther,  in  a  burst  of  confidence. 
"  She  did  years  ago  when  nice  women  weren't  doing  it." 

He  smiled  at  this,  but  tenderly.  He  didn't  leave  Ad- 
dington  very  often,  but  he  did  know  what  a  blaze  the  ves 
tals  of  the  time  keep  up. 

"  No  matter,"  said  he,  "  so  long  as  you  don't." 

"  She  drinks  brandy,"  said  Esther,  "  and  tells  things.  I 
can't  repeat  what  she  tells.  She's  different  from  anybody 
I  ever  met  —  and  I  don't  see  how  I  can  make  her  happy." 

By  this  time  Choate  saw  there  was  nothing  he  could  do 
about  Aunt  Patricia,  and  dismissed  her  from  his  orderly 
mind.  She  was  not  absolutely  pertinent  to  Esther's  hap 
piness.  But  he  looked  grave.  There  was  somebody,  he 
knew,  who  was  pertinent. 

"  I  haven't  succeeded  in  seeing  Jeff  yet,"  he  began,  with 
a  slight  hesitation.  It  seemed  to  him  it  might  be  easier 
for  her  to  hear  that  name  than  the  formal  words,  "  your 
husband  ".  She  winced.  Choate  saw  it  and  pitied  her,  as 
she  knew  he  would.  "  Is  he  coming  —  here?  " 

She  looked  at  him  with  large,  imploring  eyes. 

"  Must  I  ?  "  he  heard  her  whispering,  it  seemed  really 
to  herself. 

"  I  don't  see  how  you  can  help  it,  dear,"  he  answered. 
The  last  word  surprised  him  mightily.  He  had  never 
called  her  "  dear  ".  She  hadn't  even  been  "  Esther  "  to 
him.  But  the  warmth  of  his  compassion  and  an  irrita 
tion  that  had  been  working  in  him  with  Jeff's  return  — 


82  THE  PRISONER 

something  like  jealousy,  it  might  even  be  —  drove  the 
little  word  out  of  doors  and  bade  it  lodge  with  her  and  so 
betray  him.  Esther  heard  the  word  quite  clearly  and  knew 
what  volumes  of  commentary  it  carried ;  but  Choate,  re 
lieved,  thought  it  had  passed  her  by.  She  was  still  be 
seeching  him,  even  caressing  him,  with  the  liquid  eyes. 

"  You  see,"  she  said,  "  he  and  I  are  strangers  —  almost. 
He's  been  away  so  long." 

"You  haven't  seen  him,"  said  Choate,  like  an  accusation. 
He  had  often  had  to  bruise  that  snake.  He  hoped  she'd 
step  on  it  for  good. 

"  No,"  said  Esther.     "  He  didn't  wish  it." 

Choate's  sane  sense  told  him  that  no  man  could  fail  to 
wish  it.  If  Jeff  had  forbidden  her  to  come  at  the  intervals 
when  he  could  see  his  kin,  she  should  have  battered  down 
his  denials  and  gone  to  him.  She  should  have  left  on  his 
face  the  warm  touch  of  hers  and  the  cleansing  of  her  tears. 
Choate  had  a  tremendous  idea  of  the  obligations  of  what 
he  called  love.  He  hid  what  he  thought  of  it  in  the  fast 
nesses  of  a  shy  heart,  but  he  took  delight  and  found 
strength,  too,  in  the  certainty  that  there  is  unconquerable 
love,  and  that  it  laughs  at  even  the  locksmiths  that  fasten 
prison  doors.  He  knew  what  a  pang  it  would  have  been 
to  him  if  he  had  seen  Esther  Blake  going  year  after  year 
to  carry  her  hoarded  sweetness  to  another  man.  But  he 
wished  she  had  done  it.  Some  hardy,  righteous  fibre  in 
him  would  have  been  appeased. 

"  He's  happier  away  from  me,"  said  Esther,  shaking  her 
head.  "  His  father  understands  him.  I  don't.  Why, 
before  he  went  away  we  weren't  so  very  happy.  Didn't 
you  know  that?  " 

Choate  was  glad  and  sorry. 

"  Weren't  you?  "  he  responded.     "  Poor  child  !  " 

"  No.     We'd  begun  to  be  strangers,  in  a  way.     And  it's 


THE  PRISONER  83 

gone  on  and  on,  and  of  course  we're  really  strangers  now." 

The  Esther  she  meant  to  be  gave  her  a  sharp  little  prick 
here  —  that  Esther  seemed  to  carry  a  needle  for  the  pur 
pose  of  these  occasional  pricks,  though  she  used  it  less  and 
less  as  time  went  on  —  and  said  to  her,  "  Strangers  before 
he  went  away  ?  Oh,  no  !  I'd  like  to  think  that.  It  makes 
the  web  we're  spinning  stronger.  But  I  can't.  No. 
That  isn't  true." 

"  So  you  see,"  said  the  real  Esther  to  Choate,  "  I  can't 
do  anything.  I  sit  here  alone  with  my  hands  tied,  and 
grandma  upstairs  —  of  course  I  can't  leave  grandma  — 
and  I  can't  do  anything.  Do  you  think — "  she  looked 
very  challenging  and  pure  — "  do  you  think  it  would  be 
wicked  of  me  to  dream  of  a  divorce?  " 

Choate  got  up  and  walked  to  the  fireplace.  He  put 
both  hands  on  the  mantel  and  gripped  it,  and  Esther,  with 
that  sense  of  implacable  mastery  women  feel  at  moments 
of  sexual  triumph,  saw  the  knuckles  whiten. 

"Wouldn't  it  be  better,"  she  said,  "  for  him?  I  don't 
care  for  myself,  though  I'm  very  lonely,  very  much  at 
sea ;  but  it  does  seem  to  me  it  would  be  better  for  him  if  he 
could  be  free  and  build  his  life  up  again  from  the  begin 
ning." 

Choate  answered  in  a  choked  voice  that  made  him  shake 
his  head  impatiently: 

"  It  isn't  better  for  any  man  to  be  free." 

"  Not  if  he  doesn't  care  for  his  wife?  "  the  master  tor 
turer  proceeded,  more  and  more  at  ease  now  she  saw  how 
tight  she  had  him. 

Choate  turned  upon  her.  His  pale  face  was  scarred 
with  an  emotion  as  deep  as  the  source  of  tears,  though  she 
exulted  to  see  he  had  no  tears  to  show  her.  Men  should, 
she  felt,  be  strong. 

"  Don't  you  know  you  mustn't  say  that  kind  of  thing  to 


84  THE  PRISONER 

me  ?"  he  asked  her.  "  Don't  you  see  it's  a  temptation  ?  I 
can't  listen  to  it.  I  can't  consider  it  for  a  minute." 

"Is  it  a  temptation?"  she  asked,  in  a  whisper,  born, 
it  seemed,  of  unacknowledged  intimacies  between  them. 
The  whisper  said,  "  If  it  is  a  temptation,  it  is  not  a  tempta 
tion  to  you  alone." 

Choate  was  not  looking  at  her,  but  he  saw  her,  with  the 
eyes  of  the  mind :  the  brown  limpid  look,  the  uplift  of  her 
quivering  face,  the  curve  of  her  throat  and  the  long  ripple 
to  her  feet.  He  walked  out  of  the  room;  it  was  the  only 
thing  for  a  decent  man  to  do,  in  the  face  of  incarnate 
appeal,  challenge,  a  vitality  so  intense,  and  yet  so  uncon 
scious  of  itself,  he  knew,  that  it  was,  in  its  purity,  almost 
irresistible.  In  the  street  he  was  deaf  to  the  call  of  a 
friend  and  passed  another  without  seeing  him.  They 
chaffed  him  about  it  afterward.  He  was,  they  told  him, 
thinking  of  a  case. 

Esther  went  about  the  house  in  an  exhilarated  lightness. 
She  sang  a  little,  in  a  formless  way.  She  could  not  man 
age  a  tune,  but  she  had  a  rhythmic  style  of  humming  that 
was  not  unpleasant  to  hear  and  gave  her  occasional  outlet. 
It  was  the  animal  in  the  desert  droning  and  purring  to  it 
self  in  excess  of  ease.  She  felt  equal  to  meeting  Aunt 
Patricia  even. 

About  dusk  Aunt  Patricia  came  in  the  mediaeval  cab  with 
Denny  driving.  There  was  no  luggage.  Esther  hoped  a 
great  deal  from  that.  But  it  proved  there  was  too  much 
to  come  by  cab,  and  Denny  brought  it  afterward,  shabby 
trunks  of  a  sophisticated  look,  spattered  with  labels. 
Madame  Beattie  alighted  from  the  cab,  a  large  woman  in 
worn  black  velvet,  with  a  stale  perfume  about  her.  Esther 
was  at  the  door  to  meet  her,  and  even  in  this  outer  air  she 
could  hardly  help  putting  up  her  nose  a  little  at  the  exotic 
smell.  Madame  Beattie  was  swarthy  and  strong-featured 


THE  PRISONER  85 

with  a  soft  wrinkled  skin  unnatural  from  over-cherishing. 
She  had  bright,  humorously  satirical  eyes ;  and  her  mouth 
was  large.  Therefore  you  were  surprised  at  her  slight 
lisp,  a  curious  childishness  which  Esther  had  always  con 
sidered  pure  affectation.  She  had  forgotten  it  in  these 
later  years,  but  now  the  sound  of  it  awakened  all  the  dis 
taste  and  curiosity  she  had  felt  of  old.  She  had  always 
believed  if  Aunt  Patricia  spoke  out,  the  lisp  would  go. 
The  voice  underneath  the  lisp  was  a  sad  thing  when  you  re 
membered  it  had  once  been  "  golden  ".  It  was  raucous  yet 
husky,  a  gin  voice,  Jeffrey  had  called  it,  adding  that  she 
had  a  gin  cough.  All  this  Esther  remembered  as  she  went 
forward  prettily  and  submitted  to  Aunt  Patricia's  per 
fumed  kiss.  The  ostrich  feathers  in  the  worn  velvet  trav 
elling  hat  cascaded  over  them  both,  and  bangles  clinked  in 
a  thin  discord  with  curious  trinkets  hanging  from  her 
chatelaine.  Evidently  the  desire  to  hold  her  niece  in  her 
arms  had  been  for  telegraphic  purposes  only. 

When  they  had  gone  in  and  Aunt  Patricia  was  removing 
her  gloves  and  accepting  tea  —  she  said  she  would  not 
take  her  hat  off  until  she  went  upstairs  —  she  asked,  with 
a  cheerful  boldness : 

"  Where's  your  husband?  " 

Esther  shrank  perceptibly.  No  one  but  Lydia  had  felt 
at  liberty  to  pelt  her  with  the  incarcerated  husband,  and 
she  was  not  only  sensitive  in  fact  but  from  an  intuition 
of  the  prettiest  thing  to  do. 

"  Oh,  I  knew  he  was  out,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "  I 
keep  track  of  your  American  papers.  Isn't  he  here?" 

"  He's  in  town,"  said  Esther,  in  a  low  voice.  Her 
cheeks  burned  with  hatred  of  the  insolence  of  kin  which 
could  force  you  into  the  open  and  strip  you  naked. 

"Where?" 

«  With  his  father." 


86  THE  PRISONER 

"  Does  his  father  live  alone?  " 

"  No.     He  has  step-daughters." 

"  Children  of  that  woman  that  married  him  out  of  hand 
when  he  was  over  sixty?  Ridiculous  business!  Well, 
what's  Jeff  there  for?  Why  isn't  he  with  you?  " 

Madame  Beattie  had  a  direct  habit  of  address,  and, 
although  she  spoke  many  other  languages  fluently,  in  the 
best  of  English.  There  were  times  when  she  used  English 
with  an  extreme  of  her  lisping  accent,  but  that  was  when 
it  seemed  good  business  so  to  do.  This  she  modified  if  she 
found  herself  cruising  where  New  England  standards  called 
for  plain  New  England  speech. 

"  Why  isn't  he  with  you  ?  "  she  asked  again. 

The  tea  had  come  and  Madame  Beattie  lifted  her  cup  in 
a  manner  elegantly  calculated  to  display,  though  ingenu 
ously,  a  hand  loaded  with  rings. 

"  Dear  auntie,"  said  Esther,  widening  eyes  that  had  been 
potent  with  Alston  Choate  but  would  do  slight  execution 
among  a  feminine  contingent,  "  Jeffrey  wouldn't  be  happy 
with  me." 

"  Nonsense,"  said  Aunt  Patricia,  herself  taking  the  tea 
pot  and  strengthening  her  cup.  "  What  do  you  mean  by 
happy  ?  " 

66  He  is  completely  estranged,"  said  Esther.  "  He  is  a 
different  man  from  what  he  used  to  be." 

"  Of  course  he's  different.  You're  different.  So  am  I. 
He  can't  take  up  things  where  he  left  them,  but  he's  got 
to  take  them  up  somewhere.  What's  he  going  to  do  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Esther.  She  drank  her  tea  nerv 
ously.  It  seemed  to  her  she  needed  a  vivifying  draught. 
"  Auntie,  you  don't  quite  understand.  We  are  divorced  in 
every  sense." 

That  sounded  complete,  and  she  hoped  for  some  slight 
change  of  position  on  the  part  of  the  inquisitor. 


THE  PRISONER  87 

"  Of  course  you  went  to  see  him  while  he  was  in  prison  ?  " 
auntie  pursued  inexorably. 

"  No,"  said  Esther,  in  a  voice  thrillingly  sweet.  "  He 
didn't  wish  it." 

Auntie  helped  herself  to  tea.  Esther  made  a  mental 
note  that  an  extra  quantity  must  be  brewed  next  time. 

"  You  see,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  putting  her  cup  down 
and  settling  back  into  her  chair  with  an  undue  prominence 
of  frontal  velvet,  "  you  have  to  take  these  things  like  a 
woman  of  the  world.  What's  all  this  talk  about  feelings, 
and  Jeff's  being  unhappy  and  happy  ?  He's  married  you, 
and  it's  a  good  thing  for  you  both  you've  got  each  other 
to  turn  to.  This  kind  of  sentimental  talk  does  very  well 
before  marriage.  It  has  its  place.  You'd  never  marry 
without  it.  But  after  the  first  you  might  as  well  take 
things  as  they  come.  There  was  my  husband.  I  bore 
everything  from  him.  Then  I  kicked  over  the  traces  and 
he  bore  everything  from  me.  But  when  we  found  every 
body  was  doing  us  and  we  should  be  a  great  deal  stronger 
together  than  apart,  we  came  together  again.  And  he 
died  very  happily." 

Esther  thought,  in  her  physical  aversion  to  auntie,  that 
he  must  indeed  have  been  happy  in  the  only  escape  left 
open  to  him. 

"  Where  is  Susan  ?  "  auntie  inquired,  after  a  brief  inter 
lude  of  coughing.  It  could  never  be  known  whether  her 
coughs  were  real.  She  had  little  dry  coughs  of  doubt,  of 
derision,  of  good-natured  tolerance ;  but  perhaps  she  her 
self  couldn't  have  said  now  whether  they  had  their  origin 
in  any  disability. 

"  Grandma  is  in  her  room,"  said  Esther  faintly.  She 
felt  a  savage  distaste  for  facing  the  prospect  of  them  to 
gether,  auntie  who  would  be  sure  to  see  grandmother,  and 
grandmother  who  would  not  be  seen.  "  She  lies  in  bed." 


88  THE  PRISONER 

"All  the  time?" 

"  Yes." 

"  Not  all  the  time !  " 

"  Why,  yes,  auntie,  she  lies  in  bed  all  the  time." 

"What  for?     Is  she  crippled,  or  paralysed  or  what?  " 

"  She  says  she  is  old." 

"Old?  Susan  is  seventy-six.  She's  a  fool.  Doesn't 
she  know  you  don't  have  to  give  up  your  faculties'  at  all 
unless  you  stop  using  them?  " 

"  She  says  she  is  old,"  repeated  Esther  obstinately.  It 
seemed  to  her  a  sensible  thing  for  grandmother  to  say. 
Being  old  kept  her  happily  in  retirement.  She  wished 
auntie  had  a  similar  recognition  of  decencies. 

"  I'll  go  to  my  room  now,"  said  Madame  Beattie. 
"  What  a  nice  house !  This  is  Susan's  house,  isn't  it?  " 

"  Yes."  Esther  had  now  retired  to  the  last  defences. 
She  saw  auntie  settling  upon  them  in  a  jovial  ease.  It 
might  have  been  different,  she  thought,  if  Alston  Choate 
had  got  her  a  divorce  years  ago  and  then  married  her. 
"  Come,"  she  said,  with  an  undiminished  sweetness,  "  I'll 
take  you  to  your  room." 


yiii 

Addington,  so  Jeffrey  Blake  remembered  when  he  came 
home  to  it,  was  a  survival.  Naive  constancies  to  custom, 
habits  sprung  out  of  old  conditions  and  logical  no  more, 
and  even  the  cruder  loyalties  to  the  past,  lived  in  it  un 
changed.  This  was  as  his  mind  conceived  it.  His  roots 
had  gone  deeper  here  than  he  knew  while  he  was  still  a  part 
of  it,  a  free  citizen.  The  first  months  of  his  married  life 
had  been  spent  here,  but  as  his  prosperity  burned  the  more 
brilliantly,  he  and  Esther  had  taken  up  city  life  in  winter, 
and  for  the  summer  had  bought  a  large  and  perfectly 
equipped  house  in  a  colony  at  the  shore.  That,  in  the 
crash  of  his  fortunes,  had  gone  with  other  wreckage,  and 
now  he  never  thought  of  it  with  even  a  momentary  regret. 
It  belonged  to  that  fevered  time  when  he  was  always  going 
fast  and  faster,  as  if  life  were  a  perpetual  speeding  in  a 
lightning  car.  But  of  Addington  he  did  think,  in  the 
years  that  were  so  much  drear  space  for  reflection,  and 
though  he  felt  no  desire  to  go  back,  the  memory  of  it  was 
cool  and  still.  The  town  had  distinct  social  strata,  the 
happier,  he  felt,  in  that.  There  were  the  descendants  of 
old  shipbuilders  and  merchants  who  drew  their  sufficient 
dividends  and  lived  on  the  traditions  of  times  long  past. 
All  these  families  knew  and  accepted  one  another.  Their 
peculiarities  were  no  more  to  be  questioned  than  the  eccen 
tric  shapes  of  clouds.  The  Daytons,  who  were  phenom 
enally  ugly  in  a  bony  way,  were  the  Daytons.  Their  long 
noses  with  the  bulb  at  the  base  were  Dayton  noses.  The 

Madisons,  in  the  line  of  male  descent  from  distinguished 

89 


90  THE  PRISONER 

blood,  drank  to  an  appalling  extent ;  but  ther  were  Madi- 
sons,  and  you  didn't  interdict  your  daughters'  marrying 
them.  The  Mastertons  ate  no  meat,  and  didn't  believe  in 
banks.  They  kept  their  money  in  queer  corners,  and 
there  was  so  much  of  it  that  they  couldn't  always  remem 
ber  where,  and  the  laundress  had  orders  to  turn  all  stock 
ings  before  wetting,  and  did  indeed  often  find  bills  in  the 
toe.  But  the  laundress,  being  also  of  Addington,  though 
of  another  stratum,  recognised  this  as  a  Masterton  habit, 
and  faithfully  sought  their  hoarded  treasure  for  them,  and 
delivered  it  over  with  the  accuracy  of  an  accountant.  She 
wouldn't  have  seen  how  the  Mastertons  could  help  having 
money  in  their  clothes  unless  they  should  cease  being  Mas 
tertons.  Nor  was  it  amazing  to  their  peers,  meeting  them 
in  casual  talk,  to  realise  that  they  were  walking  deposi 
tories  of  coin  and  bills.  A  bandit  on  a  lonely  road  would, 
if  he  were  born  in  Addington,  have  forborne  to  rob  them. 
These  and  other  personal  eccentricities  Jeffrey  Blake  re 
membered  and  knew  he  should  find  them  ticking  on  like 
faithful  clocks.  It  was  all  restful  to  recall,  but  horrible 
to  meet.  He  knew  perfectly  what  the  attitude  of  Adding 
ton  would  be  to  him.  Because  he  was  Addington  born,  it 
would  stand  by  him,  and  with  a  double  loyalty  for  his 
father's  sake.  That  loyalty,  beautiful  or  stupid  as  you 
might  find  it,  he  could  not  bear.  He  hoped,  however,  to 
escape  it  by  making  his  father  the  briefest  visit  possible 
and  then  getting  off  to  the  West.  Anne  had  reminded  him 
that  Alston  Choate  had  called,  and  he  had  commented 
briefly : 

"Oh!  he's  a  good  old  boy." 

But  she  saw,  with  her  keen  eyes  gifted  to  read  the  heart, 
that  he  was  glad  he  had  not  seen  him.  The  first  really  em 
barrassing  caller  came  the  forenoon  after  Madame  Beattie 
had  arrived  at  Esther's,  Madame  Beattie  herself  in  the 


THE  PRISONER  91 

village  hack  with  Denny,  uncontrollably  curious,  on  the 
box.  Madame  Beattie  paid  twenty-five  cents  extracted 
from  the  tinkling  chatelaine,  and  dismissed  Denny,  but  he 
looked  over  his  shoulder  regretfully  until  he  had  rounded 
the  curve  of- the  drive.  Meantime  she,  in  her  plumes  and 
black  velvet,  was  climbing  the  steps,  and  Jeffrey,  who  was 
on  the  side  veranda,  heard  her  and  took  down  his  feet 
from  the  rail,  preparatory  to  flight.  But  she  was  aware 
of  him,  and  stepped  briskly  round  the  corner.  Before  he 
reached  the  door  she  was  on  him. 

"  Here,  Jeff,  here ! "  said  she  peremptorily  and  yet 
kindly,  as  you  might  detain  a  dog,  and  Jeff,  pausing,  gazed 
at  her  in  frank  disconcertment  and  remarked  as  frankly: 

"  The  devil !  " 

Madame  Beattie  threw  back  her  head  on  its  stout  mus 
cular  neck  and  laughed,  a  husky  laugh  much  like  an  old 
man's  wheeze. 

"  No !  no !  "  said  she,  approaching  him  and  extending  an 
ungloved  hand,  "  not  so  bad  as  that.  How  are  you  ? 
Tell  its  auntie." 

Jeffrey  laughed.  He  took  the  hand  for  a  brief  grasp, 
and  returned  to  the  group  of  chairs,  where  he  found  a 
comfortable  rocker  for  her. 

"  How  in  the  deuce,"  said  he,  "  did  you  get  here  so 
quick?" 

Madame  Beattie  rejected  the  rocker  and  took  a  straight 
chair  that  kept  her  affluence  of  curves  in  better  poise. 

"  Quick  after  what?  "  she  inquired,  with  a  perfect  good 
nature. 

Jeffrey  had  seated  himself  on  the  rail,  his  hands,  too, 
resting  on  it,  and  he  regarded  her  with  a  queer  terrified 
amusement,  as  if,  in  research,  he  had  dug  up  a  strange  ob 
ject  he  had  no  use  for  and  might  find  it  difficult  to  place. 
Not  to  name :  he  could  name  her  very  accurately. 


92  THE  PRISONER 

"  So  quick  after  I  got  here,"  he  replied,  with  candour. 
"  I  tell  you  plainly,  Madame  Beattie,  there  isn't  a  cent  to 
be  got  out  of  me.  I'm  done,  broke,  down  and  out." 

Madame  Beattie  regarded  him  with  an  unimpaired  good- 
humour. 

"  Bless  you,  Jeff,"  said  she,  "  I  know  that.  What  are 
you  going  to  do,  now  you're  out  ?  " 

The  question  came  as  hard  as  a  stroke  after  the  cush- 
ioned  assurance  preceding  it.  Jeff  met  it  as  he  might 
have  met  such  a  query  from  a  man  to  whom  he  owed  no 
veilings  of  hard  facts. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  he.  "  If  I  did  know  I  shouldn't 
tell  you." 

Madame  Beattie  seemed  not  to  suspect  the  possibility  of 
rebuff. 

"  Esther  hasn't  changed  a  particle,"  said  she. 

Jeff  scowled,  not  at  her,  but  absently  at  the  side  of  the 
house,  and  made  no  answer. 

"  Aren't  you  coming  down  there  ?  "  asked  Madame  Beat- 
tie  peremptorily,  with  the  air  of  drumming  him  up  to  some 
task  that  would  have  to  be  reckoned  with  in  the  end. 
"  Come,  Jeff,  why  don't  you  answer?  Aren't  you  coming 
down?" 

Jeffrey  had  ceased  scowling.  He  had  smoothed  his 
brows  out  with  his  hand,  indeed,  as  if  their  tenseness  hurt 
him. 

"  Look  here,"  said  he,  "  you  ask  a  lot  of  questions." 

She  laughed  again,  a  different  sort  of  old  laugh,  a  fat 
and  throaty  one. 

"  Did  I  ever  tell  you,"  said  she,  "  what  the  Russian 
grand  duke  said  when  I  asked  him  why  he  didn't  marry  ?  " 

"  No,"  said  Jeff,  quite  peaceably  now.  She  was  safer 
in  the  company  of  remembered  royalties. 

Madame  Beattie  sought  among  the  jingling  decorations 


THE  PRISONER  93 

of  her  person  for  a  cigarette,  found  it  and  offered  him  an 
other. 

"  Quite  good,"  she  told  him.  "  An  Italian  count  keeps 
me  supplied.  I  don't  know  where  the  creature  gets  them." 

Then,  after  they  had  lighted  up,  she  returned  to  her 
grand  duke,  and  Jeff  found  the  story  sufficiently  funny 
and  laughed  at  it,  and  she  pulled  another  out  of  her  well- 
stored  memory,  and  he  laughed  at  that.  Madame  Beattie 
told  her  stories  excellently.  She  knew  how  little  weight 
they  carry  smothered  in  feminine  graces  and  coy  obliqui 
ties  from  the  point.  Graces  had  long  ceased  to  interest 
her  as  among  the  assets  of  a  life  where  man  and  woman 
have  to  work  to  feed  themselves.  Now  she  sat  down  with 
her  brother  man  and  emulated  him  in  ready  give  and  take. 
Jeffrey  forsook  the  rail  which  had  subtly  marked  his  dis 
tance  from  her;  he  took  a  chair,  and  put  his  feet  up  on 
the  rail.  Madame  Seattle's  neatly  shod  and  very  small 
feet  went  up  on  a  chair,  and  she  tipped  the  one  she  was 
sitting  in  at  a  dangerous  angle  while  she  exhaled  luxuri 
ously,  and  so  Lydia,  coming  round  the  corner  in  a  simple 
curiosity  to  know  who  was  there,  found  them,  laughing  up 
roariously  and  dim  with  smoke.  Lydia  had  her  opinions 
about  smoking.  She  had  seen  women  indulge  in  it  at  some 
of  the  functions  where  she  and  Anne  danced,  but  she  had 
never  found  a  woman  of  this  stamp  doing  it  with  precisely 
this  air.  Indeed,  Lydia  had  never  seen  a  woman  of  Ma 
dame  Beattie's  stamp  in  her  whole  life.  She  stopped  short, 
and  the  two  could  not  at  once  get  hold  of  themselves  in 
their  peal  of  accordant  mirth.  But  Lydia  had  time  to  see 
one  thing  for  a  certainty.  Jeff's  face  had  cleared  of  its 
brooding  and  its  intermittent  scowl.  He  was  enjoying 
himself.  This,  she  thought,  in  a  sudden  rage  of  scorn, 
was  the  kind  of  thing  he  enjoyed:  not  Farvie,  not  Anne's 
gentle  ministrations,  but  the  hooting  of  a  horrible  old 


94  THE  PRISONER 

woman.  Madame  Beattie  saw  her  and  straightened  some 
of  the  laughing  wrinkles  round  her  eyes. 

"  Well,  well !  "  said  she.     "  Who's  this?  " 

Then  Jeffrey,  becoming  suddenly  grave,  as  if,  Lydia 
thought,  he  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  laughing  in  such  com 
pany,  sprang  to  his  feet,  and  threw  away  his  cigarette. 

"  Madame  Beattie,"  said  he,  "  this  is  Miss  Lydia 
French." 

Madame  Beattie  did  not  rise,  as  who,  indeed,  so  plumed 
and  black-velveted  should  for  a  slip  of  a  creature  trembling 
with  futile  rage  over  a  brother  proved  wanting  in  ideals? 
She  extended  one  hand,  while  the  other  removed  the  ciga 
rette  from  her  lips  and  held  it  at  a  becoming  distance. 

"And  who's  Miss  Lydia  French?"  said  she.  Then,  as 
Lydia,  pink  with  embarrassment  and  disapproval,  made  no 
sign,  she  added  peremptorily,  "  Come  here,  my  dear." 

Lydia  came.  It  was  true  that  Madame  Beattie  had  at 
tained  to  privilege  through  courts  and  high  estate.  When 
she  herself  had  ruled  by  the  prerogative  of  a  perfect 
throat  and  a  mind  attuned  to  it,  she  had  imbibed  a  sense  of 
power  which  was  still  dividend-paying  even  now,  though 
the  throat  was  dead  to  melody.  When  she  really  asked 
you  to  do  anything,  you  did  it,  that  was  all.  She  seldom 
asked  now,  because  her  attitude  was  all  careless  tolerance, 
keen  to  the  main  chance  but  lax  in  exacting  smaller  tribute, 
as  one  having  had  such  greater  toll.  But  Lydia's  wilful 
hesitation  awakened  her  to  some  slight  curiosity,  and  she 
bade  her  the  more  commandingly.  Lydia  was  standing 
before  her,  red,  unwillingly  civil,  and  Madame  Beattie 
reached  forward  and  took  one  of  her  little  plump  work- 
roughened  hands,  held  it  for  a  moment,  as  if  in  guarantee 
of  kindliness,  and  then  dropped  it. 

"  Now,"  said  she,  "  who  are  you?  " 

Jeffrey,  seeing  Lydia  so  put  about,  answered  for  her 


THE  PRISONER  95 

again,  but  this  time  in  terms  of  a  warmth  which  astonished 
him  as  it  did  Lydia. 

"  She  is  my  sister  Lydia." 

Madame  Beattie  looked  at  him  in  a  frank  perplexity. 

"Now,"  said  she,  "what  do  you  mean  by  that?  No, 
no,  my  dear,  don't  go."  Lydia  had  turned  by  the  slightest 
movement.  "  You  haven't  any  sisters,  Jeff.  Oh,  I  re- ' 
member.  It  was  that  romantic  marriage."  Lydia  turned 
back  now  and  looked  straight  at  her,  as  if  to  imply  if  there 
were  any  qualifying  of  the  marriage  she  had  a  word  to  say. 
"Wasn't  there  another  child?"  Madame  Beattie  contin 
ued,  still  to  Jeff. 

"  Anne  is  in  the  house,"  said  he. 

He  had  placed  a  chair  for  Lydia,  with  a  kindly  solici 
tude,  seeing  how  uncomfortable  she  was ;  but  Lydia  took 
no  notice.  Now  she  straightened  slightly,  and  put  her 
pretty  head  up.  She  looked  again  as  she  did  when  the 
music  was  about  to  begin,  and  her  little  feet,  though  they 
kept  their  decorous  calm,  were  really  beating  time. 

"  Well,  you're  a  pretty  girl,"  said  Madame  Beattie, 
dropping  her  lorgnon.  She  had  lifted  it  for  a  stare  and 
taken  in  the  whole  rebellious  figure.  "  Esther  didn't  tell 
me  you  were  pretty.  You  know  Esther,  don't  you?  " 

"  No,"  said  Lydia,  in  a  wilful  stubbornness ;  "  I  don't 
know  her." 

"  You've  seen  her,  haven't  you?  " 

"  Yes,  I've  seen  her." 

"  You  don't  like  her  then  ? "  said  Madame  astutely. 
"  What's  the  matter  with  her?  " 

Something  gave  way  in  Lydia.  The  pressure  of  feeling 
was  too  great  and  candour  seethed  over  the  top. 

"  She's  a  horrid  woman." 

Or  was  it  because  some  inner  watchman  on  the  tower 
told  her  Jeff  himself  had  better  hear  again  what  one  per- 


96  THE  PRISONER 

son  thought  of  Esther?  Madame  Seattle  threw  back  her 
plumed  head  and  laughed,  the  same  laugh  she  had  used  to 
annotate  the  stories.  Lydia  immediately  hated  herself 
for  having  challenged  it.  Jeffrey,  she  knew,  was  faintly 
smiling,  though  she  could  not  guess  his  inner  commen 
tary: 

"  What  a  little  devil !  " 

Madame  Beattie  now  turned  to  him. 

"  Same  old  story,  isn't  it  ?  "  she  stated.  "  Every  woman 
of  woman  born  is  bound  to  hate  her." 

"  Yes,"  said  Jeff. 

Lydia  walked  away,  expecting,  as  she  went,  to  be  called 
back  and  resolving  that  no  inherent  power  in  the  voice  of 
aged  hatefulness  should  force  her.  But  Madame  Beattie, 
having  placed  her,  had  forgotten  all  about  her.  She  rose, 
and  brushed  the  ashes  from  her  velvet  curves. 

"  Come,"  she  was  saying  to  Jeffrey,  "  walk  along  with 
me." 

He  obediently  picked  up  his  hat. 

"  I  sha'n't  go  home  with  you,"  said  he,  "  if  that's  what 
you  mean." 

She  took  his  arm  and  convoyed  him  down  the  steps, 
leaning  wearily.  She  had  long  ago  ceased  to  exercise 
happy  control  over  useful  muscles.  They  even  creaked  in 
her  ears  and  did  strange  things  when  she  made  requests  of 
them. 

"  You  understand,"  said  Jeffrey,  when  they  were  pursu 
ing  a  slow  way  along  the  street,  he  with  a  chafed  sense  of 
ridiculous  captivity.  "  I  sha'n't  go  into  the  house.  I 
won't  even  go  to  the  door." 

"Stuff!"  said  the  lady.  "You  needn't  tell  me  you 
don't  want  to  see  Esther." 

Jeff  didn't  tell  her  that.  He  didn't  tell  her  anything. 
He  stolidly  guided  her  along. 


THE  PRISONER  97 

"  There  isn't  a  man  born  that  wouldn't  want  to  see 
Esther  if  he'd  seen  her  once,"  said  Madame  Beattie. 

But  this  he  neither  combated  nor  confirmed,  and  at  the 
corner  nearest  Esther's  house  he  stopped,  lifted  the  hand 
from  his  arm  and  placed  it  in  a  stiff  rigour  at  her  waist. 
He  then  took  off  his  hat,  prepared  to  stand  while  she  went 
on.  And  Madame  Beattie  laughed. 

"  You're  a  brute,"  said  she  pleasantly,  "  a  dear,  sweet 
brute.  Well,  you'll  come  to  it.  I  shall  tell  Esther  you 
love  her  so  much  you  hate  her,  and  she'll  send  out  spies 
after  you.  Good-bye.  If  you  don't  come,  I'll  come 
again." 

Jeffrey  made  no  answer.  He  watched  her  retreating 
figure  until  it  turned  in  at  the  gate,  and  then  he  wheeled 
abruptly  and  went  back.  An  instinct  of  flight  was  on  him. 
Here  in  the  open  street  he  longed  for  walls,  only  perhaps 
because  he  knew  how  well  everybody  wished  him  and  their 
kindness  he  could  not  meet. 

Madame  Beattie  found  Esther  at  the  door,  waiting. 
She  was  an  excited  Esther,  bright-eyed,  short  of  breath. 

"Where  have  you  been?"   she  demanded. 

Madame  Beattie  took  off  her  hat  and  stabbed  the  pin 
through  it.  Her  toupee,  deranged  by  the  act,  percepti 
bly  slid,  but  though  she  knew  it  by  the  feel,  that  eccen 
tricity  did  not,  in  the  company  of  a  mere  niece,  trouble 
her  at  all.  She  sank  into  a  chair  and  laid  her  hat  on 
the  neighbouring  stand. 

"  Where  have  you  been  ?  "  repeated  Esther,  a  pulse 
of  something  like  anger  beating  through  the  words. 

Madame  Beattie  answered  idly :     "  Up  to  see  Jeff." 

"I  knew  it!"  Esther  breathed. 

"  Of  course,"  said  Madame  Beattie  carelessly.  "  Jeff 
and  I  were  quite  friends  in  old  times.  I  was  glad  I  went. 
It  cheered  him  up." 


98  THE  PRISONER 

"  Did  he  — "     Esther  paused. 

"  Ask  for  you  ?  "  supplied  Madame  Beattie  pleasantly. 
"  Not  a  word." 

Here  Esther's  curiosity  did  whip  her  on.  She  had  to 
ask: 

"How  does  he  look?" 

"  Oh,  youngish,"  said  Madame.  "  Rather  flabby.  Ob 
stinate.  Ugly,  too." 

"  Ugly?     Plain,  do  you  mean?  " 

"  No.  American  for  ugly  —  obstinate,  sore-headed. 
He's  hardened.  He  was  rather  a  silly  boy,  I  remember. 
Had  enthusiasms.  Much  in  love.  He  isn't  now.  He's 
no  use  for  women." 

Esther  looked  at  her  in  an  arrested  thoughtfulness. 
Madame  Beattie  could  have  laughed.  She  had  delivered 
the  challenge  Jeff  had  not  sent,  and  Esther  was  accepting 
it,  wherever  it  might  lead,  to  whatever  duelling  ground. 
Esther  couldn't  help  that.  A  challenge  was  a  challenge. 
She  had  to  answer.  It  was  a  necessity  of  type.  Madame 
Beattie  saw  the  least  little  flickering  thought  run  into  her 
eyes,  and  knew  she  was  involuntarily  charting  the  means 
of  summons,  setting  up  the  loom,  as  it  were,  to  weave  the 
magic  web.  She  got  up,  took  her  hat,  gave  her  toupee 
a  little  smack  with  the  hand,  and  unhinged  it  worse  than 
ever. 

"  You'll  have  to  give  him  up,"  she  said. 

"Give  him  up!"  flamed  Esther.  "Do  you  think  I 
want  — " 

There  she  paused  and  Madame  Beattie  supplied  temper 
ately  : 

"  No  matter  what  you  want.     You  couldn't  have  him." 

Then  she  went  toiling  upstairs,  her  chained  ornaments 
clinking,  and  only  when  she  had  shut  the  door  upon  herself 
did  she  relax  and  smile  over  the  simplicity  of  even  a  femi- 


THE  PRISONER  99 

nine  creature  so  versed  in  obliquity  as  Esther.  For  Es 
ther  might  want  to  escape  the  man  who  had  brought  dis 
grace  upon  her,  but  her  flying  feet  would  do  her  no  good, 
so  long  as  the  mainspring  of  her  life  set  her  heart  beating 
irrationally  for  conquest.  Esther  had  to  conquer  even 
when  the  event  would  bring  disaster :  like  a  chieftain  who 
would  enlarge  his  boundaries  at  the  risk  of  taking  in  sav 
ages  bound  to  sow  the  dragon's  teeth. 


IX 

That  evening  the  Blake  house  had  the  sound  and  look 
of  social  life,  voices  in  conversational  interchange  and 
lights  where  Mary  Nellen  excitedly  arrayed  them.  Alston 
Choate  had  come  to  call,  and  following  him  appeared  an 
elderly  lady  whom  Jeffrey  greeted  with  more  outward 
warmth  than  he  had  even  shown  his  father.  Alston  Choate 
had  walked  in  with  a  simple  directness  as  though  he  were 
there  daily,  and  Anne  impulsively  went  forward  to  him. 
She  felt  she  knew  him  very  well.  They  were  quite  friends. 
Alston,  smiling  at  her  and  taking  her  hand  on  the  way  to 
the  colonel  and  Jeff,  seemed  to  recognise  that,  and  greeted 
her  less  formally  than  the  others.  The  colonel  was  moved 
at  seeing  him.  The  Choates  were  among  the  best  of  local 
lineage,  men  and  women  distinguished  by  clear  rigidities 
of  conduct.  Their  friendship  was  a  promissory  note, 
bound  to  be  honoured  to  the  full.  Lydia  was  for  some 
reason  abashed,  and  Jeff,  both  she  and  Anne  thought, 
not  adequately  welcoming.  But  how  could  he  be,  Anne 
considered.  He  was  in  a  position  of  unique  loneliness. 
He  lacked  fellowship.  Nobody  but  Alston,  in  their 
stratum  at  least,  had  come  in  person.  No  wonder  he 
looked  warily,  lest  he  assume  too  much. 

Before  they  settled  down,  the  elderly  lady,  with  a  thud 
of  feet  softly  shod,  walked  through  the  hall  and  stood  at  the 
library  door  regarding  them  benignantly.  And  then  Jeff, 
with  an  outspoken  sound  of  pleasure  and  surprise,  got  up 

and  drew  her  in,  and  Choate  smiled  upon  her  as  if  she  were 

100 


THE  PRISONER  101 

delightfully  unlike  anybody  else.  The  colonel,  with  a 
quick,  moved  look,  just  said  her  name: 

"Amabel!" 

She  gave  warm,  quick  grasps  from  a  firm  hand,  gave 
them  all  round,  not  seeming  to  know  she  hadn't  met  Anne 
and  Lydia,  and  at  once  took  off  her  bonnet.  It  had 
strings  and  altogether  belonged  to  an  epoch  at  least 
twenty  years  away.  The  bonnet  she  "  laid  aside  "  on  a 
table  with  a  certain  absent  care,  as  ladies  were  accustomed 
to  treat  bonnets  before  they  got  into  the  way  of  jabbing 
them  with  pins.  Then  she  sat  down,  earnestly  solicitous 
and  attentive  as  at  a  consultation.  Anne  thought  she  was 
the  most  beautiful  person  she  had  ever  seen.  It  was  a 
pity  Miss  Amabel  Bracebridge  could  not  have  known  that 
impetuous  verdict.  It  would  have  brought  her  a  sur 
prised,  spontaneous  laugh:  nothing  could  have  convinced 
her  it  was  not  delicious  foolery.  She  was  tall  and  broad 
and  heavy.  When  she  stood  in  the  doorway,  she  seemed 
to  fill  it.  Now  that  she  sat  in  the  chair,  she  filled  that,  a 
soft,  stout  woman  with  great  shoulders  and  a  benign  face, 
a  troubled  face,  as  if  she  were  used  to  soothing  ills,  yet 
found  for  them  no  adequate  recompense.  Her  dark  grey 
dress  was  buttoned  in  front,  after  the  fashion  of  a  time 
long  past.  It  was  so  archaic  in  cut,  with  a  little  ruffle  at 
neck  and  sleeves,  that  it  did  more  than  adequate  service 
toward  maturing  her.  Indeed,  there  was  no  youth  about 
Miss  Amabel,  except  the  youth  of  her  eyes  and  smile. 
There  were  childlike  wistfulness  and  hope,  but  experience 
chiefly,  of  life,  of  the  unaccounted  for,  the  unaccountable. 
She  had,  above  all,  an  expression  of  well-wishing.  Now 
she  sat  and  looked  about  her. 

"  Dear  me  I "  she  said,  "  how  pleasant  it  is  to  see  this 
house  open  again." 

"  But  it's  been  open,"  Lydia  impulsively  reminded  her. 


102  THE  PRISONER 

"  Yes,"  said  Miss  Amabel.  "  But  not  this  way."  She 
turned  to  Jeff  and  regarded  him  anxiously.  "  Don't  you 
smoke  ?  "  she  asked. 

He  laughed  again.  He  was  exceedingly  pleased,  Anne 
saw,  merely  at  seeing  her.  Miss  Amabel  was  exactly  as 
he  remembered  her. 

"  Yes,"  said  he.     "  Want  us  to  ?  " 

She  put  up  her  long  eyebrows  and  smiled  as  if  in  some 
amusement  at  herself. 

"  I've  learned  lately,"  she  said,  "  that  gentlemen  are  so 
devoted  to  it  they  feel  lost  without  it." 

"  Light  up,  Choate,"  said  Jeffrey.  "  My  sisters  won't 
mind.  Will  you?  "  He  interrogated  Anne.  "  They  get 
along  with  me." 

No,  Anne  didn't  mind,  and  she  rose  and  brought 
matches  and  little  trays.  Lydia  often  wondered  how 
Anne  knew  the  exact  pattern  of  man's  convenience.  But 
though  Choate  accepted  a  cigar,  he  did  not  light  it. 

"  Not  now,"  he  said,  when  Jeffrey  offered  him  a  light ; 
he  laid  the  cigar  down,  tapping  it  once  or  twice  with  his 
fine  hand,  and  Anne  thought  he  refrained  in  courtesy  to 
ward  her  and  Lydia. 

"  This  is  very  pleasant,"  said  the  colonel  suddenly. 
"  It's  good  to  see  you,  Amabel.  Now  I  feel  myself  at 
home." 

But  what,  after  the  first  settling  was  over,  had  they 
to  say?  The  same  thought  was  in  all  their  minds.  What 
was  Jeffrey  going  to  do?  He  knew  that,  and  moved  un 
happily.  Whatever  he  was  going  to  do,  he  wouldn't  talk 
about  it.  But  Miss  Amabel  was  approaching  him  with  the 
clearest  simplicity. 

"  Jeff,  my  dear,"  she  said,  "  I  can't  wait  to  hear  about 
your  ideal  republic." 

And  then,  all  his  satisfaction  gone  and  his  scowl  come 


THE  PRISONER  103 

back,  Jeff  shook  his  head  as  if  a  persistent  fly  had  lighted 
on  him,  and  again  he  disclaimed  achievement. 

"Amabel,"  said  he,  "I'm  awfully  sick  of  that,  you 
know." 

"  But,  dear  boy,  you  revolutionised  — "  she  was  about 
to  add,  "  the  prison,"  but  stumbled  lamely  — "  the 
place." 

"  The  papers  told  us  that,"  said  Choate.  It  was  ap 
parent  he  was  helping  somebody  out,  but  whether  Jeff  or 
Miss  Amabel  even  he  couldn't  have  said. 

"  It  jsn't  revolutionised,"  said  Jeff.  He  turned  upon 
Choate  brusquely.  "  It's  exactly  the  same." 

"  They  say  it's  revolutionised,"  Miss  Amabel  offered 
anxiously. 

"  Who  says  so  ?  "  he  countered,  now  turning  on  her. 

"  The  papers,"  she  told  him.  "  You  didn't  write  me 
about  it.  I  asked  you  all  sorts  of  questions  and  you 
wouldn't  say  a  word." 

"  But  you  wrote  me,"  said  Jeff  affectionately,  "  every 
week.  I  got  so  used  to  your  letters  I  sha'n't  be  able  to  do 
without  them ;  I  shall  have  to  see  you  every  day." 

"  Of  course  we're  going  to  see  each  other,"  she  said. 
"  And  there's  such  a  lot  you  can  do." 

She  looked  so  earnestly  entreating  that  Choate,  who 
sat  not  far  from  her,  gave  a  murmured :  "  Ah,  Miss  Ama 
bel  ! "  In  his  mind  the  half-despairing,  wholly  loving 
thought  had  been :  "  Good  old  girl !  You're  spending 
yourself  and  all  your  money,  but  it's  no  use  —  no  use." 

She  was  going  on  with  a  perfect  clarity  of  purpose. 

"  Oh,  you  know,  Jeff  can  do  more  for  us  than  anybody 
else." 

"  What  do  you  want  done  for  you?  "  he  inquired. 

His  habit  of  direct  attack  gave  Lydia  a  shiver.  She 
was  sure  people  couldn't  like  it,  and  she  was  exceedingly 


104  THE  PRISONER 

anxious  for  him  to  be  liked.  Miss  Amabel  turned  to  Far- 
vie. 

"  You  see,"  she  said,  "  Addington  is  waking  up.  I 
didn't  dwell  very  much  on  it,"  she  added,  now  to  Jeff, 
"  when  I  wrote  you,  because  I  thought  you'd  like  best  to 
think  of  it  as  it  was.  But  now  — " 

"  Now  I'm  out,"  said  Jeff  brutally,  "  you  find  me  equal 
to  it." 

"  I  think,"  said  Miss  Amabel,  "  you  can  do  so  much  for 
us."  Nothing  troubled  her  governed  calm.  It  might  al 
most  be  that,  having  looked  from  high  places  into  deep 
ones,  no  abyss  could  dizzy  her.  "  Weedon  Moore  feels  as 
I  do." 

"  Weedon  Moore  ?  "  Jeffrey  repeated,  in  a  surprised 
and  most  uncordial  tone.  He  looked  at  Choate. 

"  Yes,"  said  Choate,  as  if  he  confirmed  not  only  the 
question  but  Jeff's  inner  feeling,  "  he's  here.  He's  prac 
tising  law,  and  besides  that  he  edits  the  Argosy." 

"  Owns  it,  too,  I  think,"  said  Farvie.  "  They  told  me 
so  at  the  news-stand." 

"  Well,"  said  Choate  pointedly,  "  it's  said  Miss  Amabel 
owns  it." 

"  Then,"  said  Jeff,  including  her  abruptly,  "  you've  the 
whip-hand.  You  can  get  Moore  out  of  it.  What's  he  in 
it  for  anyway?  Did  you  have  to  take  him  over  with  the 
business  ?  " 

Miss  Amabel  was  plainly  grieved. 

"  Now  why  should  you  want  to  turn  him  out  of  it  ?  "  she 
asked,  really  of  Choate  who  had  started  the  attack.  "  Mr. 
Moore  is  a  very  able  young  man,  of  the  highest  ideals." 

Jeff  laughed.  It  was  a  kindly  laugh.  Anne  was  again 
sure  he  loved  Miss  Amabel. 

"  I  can't  see  Moore  changing  much  after  twenty-five," 
he  said  to  Choate,  who  confirmed  him  briefly : 


THE  PRISONER  105 

"  Same  old  Weedie." 

"  Mr.  Moore  is  not  popular,"  said  Miss  Amabel,  with 
dignity,  turning  now  to  Farvie.  "  He  never  has  been, 
here  in  Addington.  He  comes  of  plain  people." 

"That's  not  it,  Miss  Amabel,"  said  Choate  gently. 
"  He  might  have  been  spawned  out  of  the  back  meadows  or 
he  might  have  been  —  a  Bracebridge."  He  bowed  to  her 
with  a  charming  conciliation  and  Miss  Amabel  sat  a  little 
straighter.  "  If  we  don't  accept  him,  it's  because  he's 
Weedon  Moore." 

"  We  were  in  school  with  him,  you  know :  in  college, 
too,"  said  Jeff,  with  that  gentleness  men  always  accorded 
her,  men  of  perception  who  saw  in  her  the  motherhood  des 
tined  to  diffuse  itself,  often  to  no  end:  she  was  so  noble 
and  at  the  same  time  so  helpless  in  the  crystal  prison  of 
her  hopes.  "  We  knew  Weedie  like  a  book." 

Miss  Amabel  took  on  an  added  dignity,  proportioned 
to  the  discomfort  of  her  task.  Here  she  was  defending 
Weedon  Moore  whom  her  outer  sensibilities  rejected  the 
while  his  labelled  virtues  moved  her  soul.  Sometimes  when 
she  found  herself  with  people  like  these  to-night,  mani 
festly  her  own  kind,  she  was  tired  of  being  good. 

"  I  don't  know  any  one,"  said  she,  "  who  feels  the  pre 
vailing  unrest  more  keenly  than  Weedon  Moore." 

At  that  instant,  Mary  Nellen,  her  eyes  brightening  as 
these  social  activities  increased,  appeared  in  the  doorway, 
announcing  doubtfully: 

"  Mr.  Moore." 

Jeffrey,  as  if  actually  startled,  looked  round  at  Choate 
who  was  unaffectedly  annoyed.  Anne,  rising  to  receive 
the  problematic  Moore,  thought  they  had  an  air  of  wonder 
ing  how  they  could  repel  unwarranted  invasion.  Miss 
Amabel,  in  a  sort  of  protesting,  delicate  distress,  was  loy 
ally  striving  to  make  the  invader's  path  plain. 


106  THE  PRISONER 

"  I  told  him  I  was  coming,"  she  said.  "  It  seems  he 
had  thought  of  dropping  in."  Then  Anne  went  out  on  the 
heels  of  Mary  Nellen,  hearing  Miss  Amabel  conclude,  as 
she  left,  with  an  apologetic  note  unfamiliar  to  her  soft 
voice,  "  He  wants  you  to  write  something,  Jeff,  for  the 
Argosy." 

Anne,  even  before  seeing  him,  became  conscious  that 
Mary  Nellen  regarded  the  newcomer  as  undesirable ;  and 
when  she  came  on  him  standing,  hat  in  hand,  she  agreed 
that  Weedon  Moore  was,  in  his  outward  integument, 
exceedingly  unpleasant:  a  short,  swarthy,  tubby  man, 
always,  she  was  to  note,  dressed  in  smooth  black,  and 
invariably  wearing  or  carrying,  with  the  gravity  of  a 
funeral  mourner,  what  Addington  knew  as  a  "  tall  hat ". 
When  the  weather  gave  him  countenance,  he  wore  a  black 
coat  with  a  cape.  One  flashing  ring  adorned  his  left 
hand,  and  he  indulged  a  barbaric  taste  in  flowing  ties. 
Seeing  Anne,  he  spoke  at  once,  and  if  she  had  not  been  pre 
pared  for  him  she  must  have  guessed  him  to  be  a  man  come 
on  a  message  of  importance.  There  was  conscious  empha 
sis  in  his  voice,  and  there  needed  to  be  if  it  was  to  accom 
plish  anything:  a  high  voice,  strident,  and,  like  the  rest  of 
him,  somehow  suggesting  insect  life.  He  held  out  his  hand 
and  Anne  most  unwillingly  took  it. 

"  Miss  French,"  said  he,  with  no  hesitation  before  her 
name,  "  how  is  Jeff?  " 

The  mere  inquiry  set  Anne  vainly  to  hoping  that  he 
need  not  come  in.  But  he  gave  no  quarter. 

"  I  said  I'd  run  over  to-night,  paper  or  no  paper. 
I'm  frightfully  busy,  you  know,  cruelly,  abominably  busy. 
But  I  just  wanted  to  see  Jeff." 

"  Won't  you  come  in  ?  "  said  Anne. 

Even  then  he  did  not  abandon  his  hat.  He  kept  his 
hold  on  it,  bearing  it  before  him  in  a  way  that  made  Anne 


THE  PRISONER  107 

think  absurdly  of  shields  and  bucklers.  When,  in  the 
library,  she  turned  to  present  him,  as  if  he  were  an  un 
pleasant  find  she  had  got  to  vouch  for  somehow,  the  men 
were  already  on  their  feet  and  Jeff  was  setting  forward 
a  chair.  She  could  not  help  thinking  it  was  a  clever  stage 
'  business  to  release  him  from  the  necessity  of  shaking  hands. 
But  Moore  did  not  abet  him  in  that  informality.  His 
small  hand  was  out,  and  he  was  saying  in  a  sharp,  strained 
voice,  exactly  as  if  he  were  making  a  point  of  some  kind, 
an  oratorical  point : 

"  Jeff,  my  dear  fellow !  I'm  tremendously  glad  to  see 
you." 

Anne  thought  Jeff  might  not  shake  hands  with  him  at 
all.  But  she  saw  him  steal  a  shamefaced  look  at  Miss 
Amabel  and  immediately,  as  if  something  radical  had  to  be 
done  when  it  came  to  the  friend  of  a  beloved  old  girl  like 
her,  strike  his  hand  into  Moore's,  with  an  emphasis  the 
more  pronounced  for  his  haste  to  get  it  over.  Moore 
seemed  enraptured  at  the  handshake  and  breathless  over 
the  occasion.  Having  begun  shaking  hands  he  kept  on 
with  enthusiasm:  the  colonel,  Miss  Amabel  and  Lydia  had 
to  respond  to  an  almost  fervid  greeting. 

Only  Choate  proved  immune.  He  had  vouchsafed  a 
cool :  "  How  are  you,  Weedie  ?  "  when  Moore  began,  and 
that  seemed  all  Moore  was  likely  to  expect.  Then  they 
all  sat  down  and  there  was,  Lydia  decided,  as  she  glanced 
from  one  to  another,  no  more  pleasure  in  it.  There  was 
talk.  Moore  chatted  so  exuberantly,  his  little  hands  upon 
his  fattish  knees,  that  he  seemed  to  squeeze  sociability  out 
of  himself  in  a  rapture  of  generous  willingness  to  share  all 
he  had.  He  asked  the  colonel  how  he  liked  Addington, 
and  was  not  abashed  at  being  reminded  that  the  colonel 
had  known  Addington  for  a  good  many  years. 

"  Still  it's  changed,"  said  Moore,  regarding  him  almost 


108  THE  PRISONER 

archly.  "  Addington  isn't  the  place  it  was  even  a  year 
ago." 

"  I  hope  we've  learned  something,"  said  Miss  Amabel 
earnestly  and  yet  prettily  too. 

"  My  theory  of  Addington,"  said  Choate  easily,  "  is 
that  we  all  wish  we  were  back  in  the  Addington  of  a  hun 
dred  years  ago." 

"  You'd  want  to  be  in  the  dominant  class,"  said  Moore. 
There  was  something  like  the  trammels  of  an  unwilling 
respect  over  his  manner  to  Choate ;  yet  still  he  managed  to 
be  rallying.  "  When  the  old  merchants  were  coming  home 
with  china  and  bales  of  silk  and  Paris  shoes  for  madam. 
And  think  of  it,"  said  he,  raising  his  sparse  eyebrows  and 
looking  like  a  marionette  moulded  to  express  something 
and  saying  it  with  painful  clumsiness,  almost  grotesque- 
rie,  "  the  ships  are  bringing  human  products  now. 
They're  bringing  us  citizens,  bone  and  sinew  of  the  repub 
lic,  and  we  cry  back  to  china  and  bales  of  silk." 

"  I  didn't  answer  you,  Moore,"  said  Choate,  turning  to 
him  and  speaking,  Lydia  thought,  with  the  slightest  ar 
rogance.  "  I  should  have  wanted  to  belong  to  the  gov 
erning  class  —  of  course." 

"  Now !  "  said  Miss  Amabel.  She  spoke  gently,  and  she 
was,  they  saw,  pained  at  the  turn  the  talk  had  taken. 
"  Alston,  why  should  you  say  that  ?  " 

"  Because  I  mean  it,"  said  Alston.  His  quietude  seemed 
to  carry  a  private  message  to  Moore,  but  he  turned  to  her, 
as  he  spoke  and  smiled  as  if  to  ask  her  not  to  interpret 
him  harshly.  "  Of  course  I  should  have  wanted  to  be  in 
the  dominant  class.  So  does  everybody,  really." 

"  No,  my  dear,"  said  Miss  Amabel. 

"No,"  agreed  Choate,  "you  don't.  The  others  like 
you  didn't.  I  won't  embarrass  you  by  naming  them. 
You  want  to  sit  submerged,  you  others,  and  be  choked 


THE  PRISONER  109 

by  slime,  if  you  must  be,  and  have  the  holy  city  built  up 
on  your  shoulders.  But  the  rest  of  us  don't.  Moore  here 
doesn't,  do  you,  Weedie?  " 

Weedon  gave  a  quick  embarrassed  laugh. 

"  You're  so  droll,"  said  he. 

"  No,"  said  Choate  quietly,  «  I'm  not  being  droll.  Of 
course  I  want  to  belong  to  the  dominant  class.  So  does 
the  man  that  never  dominated  in  his  life.  He  wants  to 
overthrow  the  over-lords  so  he  can  rule  himself.  He 
wants  to  crowd  me  so  he  can  push  into  a  place  beside  me." 

Moore  laughed  with  an  overdone  enjoyment. 

"  Excellent,"  he  said,  squeezing  the  words  out  of  his 
knees.  "  You're  such  a  humourist." 

If  he  wanted  to  be  offensive,  that  was  the  keenest  cut 
he  could  have  delivered. 

"  I  have  often  thought,"  said  the  colonel,  beginning  in  a 
hesitating,  deferent  way  that  made  his  utterance  rather 
notable,  "  that  we  saddle  what  we  call  the  lower  orders 
with  motives  different  from  our  own." 

"  Precisely,"  Choate  clipped  in.  "  We  used  to  think, 
when  they  committed  a  perfectly  logical  crime,  like  steal 
ing  a  sheep  or  a  loaf  of  bread,  that  it  was  absolutely  dif 
ferent  from  anything  we  could  have  done.  Whereas  in 
their  places  we  should  have  tried  precisely  the  same  thing. 
Just  as  cleanliness  is  a  matter  of  bathtubs  and  tempera 
ture.  We  shouldn't  bathe  if  we  had  to  break  the  ice  over 
a  quart  of  water  and  then  go  out  and  run  a  trolley  car  all 
day." 

Lydia's  face,  its  large  eyes  fixed  upon  him,  said  so 
plainly  "  I  don't  believe  it  "  that  he  laughed,  with  a  sud 
den  enjoyment  of  her,  and,  after  an  instant  of  wider-eyed 
surprise,  she  laughed  too. 

"  And  here's  Miss  Amabel,"  Choate  went  on,  in  the  voice 
it  seemed  he  kept  for  her,  "  going  to  the  outer  extreme  and 


110  THE  PRISONER 

believing,  because  the  labouring  man  has  been  bled,  that 
he's  incapable  of  bleeding  you.  Don't  you  think  it,  Miss 
Amabel.  He's  precisely  like  the  rest  of  us.  Like  me. 
Like  Weedon  here.  He'll  sit  up  on  his  platform  and 
judge  me  like  forty  thousand  prophets  out  of  Israel ;  but 
put  him  where  I  am  and  he'll  cling  with  his  eyelids  and 
stick  there.  Just  as  I  shall." 

Miss  Amabel  looked  deeply  troubled  and  also  at  a  loss. 

"  I  only  think,  Alston,"  she  said,  "  that  so  much  in 
sight,  so  much  of  the  deepest  knowledge  comes  of  pain. 
And  the  poor  have  suffered  pain  so  many  centuries. 
They've  learned  things  we  don't  know.  Look  how  they 
help  one  another.  Look  at  their  self-sacrifice." 

"  Look  at  your  own  self-sacrifice,"  said  Choate. 

"  Oh,  but  they  know,"  said  she.  The  flame  of  a  great 
desire  was  in  her  face.  "  I  don't  know  what  it  is  to  be 
hungry.  If  I  starved  myself  I  shouldn't  know,  because  in 
somebody's  pantry  would  be  the  bread-box  I  could  put  my 
hand  into.  They  know,  Alston.  It  gives  them  insight. 
When  they  remember  the  road  they've  travelled,  they're 
not  going  to  make  the  mistakes  we've  made." 

"  Oh,  yes,  they  are,"  said  Choate.  "  Pardon  me. 
There  are  going  to  be  robbers  and  pirates  and  Napoleons 
and  get-rich-quicks  born  for  quite  a  while  yet.  And 
they're  not  going  to  be  born  in  my  class  alone  —  nor  Wee- 
don's." 

Weedon  squirmed  at  this,  and  even  Jeff  thought  it 
rather  a  nasty  cut.  But  Jeff  did  not  know  yet  how  well 
Choate  knew  Weedon  in  the  ways  of  men.  And  Weedon 
accepted  no  rebuff.  He  turned  to  Jeff,  distinctly  leaving 
Choate  as  one  who  would  have  his  little  pleasantries. 

"  Jeff,"  he  said,  "  I  want  you  to  do  something  for  the 
Argosy:9 


THE  PRISONER  111 

Jeff  at  once  knew  what. 

"  Queer,"  he  said,  "  how  you  all  think  I've  got  copy  out 
of  jail." 

Anne  resented  the  word.  It  was  not  jail,  she  thought, 
a  federal  prison  where  gentlemen,  when  they  have  done 
wrong  or  been,  like  Jeff,  falsely  accused,  may  go  with  dig 
nity. 

"  My  dear,"  said  Miss  Amabel,  in  a  manner  at  once  all 
compassion  and  inexorable  demand,  "  you've  got  so  much 
to  tell  us.  You  men  in  that  —  place,"  she  stumbled  over 
the  word  and  then  accepted  it  — "  discussed  the  ideal  re 
public.  You  made  it,  by  discussing  it." 

"  Yes,"  said  Choate,  in  voice  of  curious  circumspection 
as  if  he  hardly  knew  what  form  even  of  eulogy  might  hurt, 
"  it  was  an  astonishing  piece  of  business.  You  can't  ex 
pect  people  not  to  notice  a  thing  like  that." 

"  I  can't  help  it,"  said  Jeff.  "  I  don't  want  such  a  row 
made  over  it." 

Whether  the  thing  was  too  intimate,  too  near  his  heart 
still  beating  sluggishly  it  might  be,  from  prison  air,  could 
not  be  seen.  But  Miss  Amabel,  exquisitely  compassionate, 
was  yet  inexorable,  because  he  had  something  to  give  and 
must  not  withhold. 

"  The  wonderful  part  of  it  is,"  she  said,  "  that  when 
you  have  built  up  your  ideal  government,  prison  ceases  to 
be  prison.  There  won't  be  punishment  any  more." 

"  Oh,  don't  you  make  that  mistake,"  said  Jeff,  instantly, 
moved  now  too  vitally  to  keep  out  of  it.  *'  There  are  going 
to  be  punishments  all  along  the  line.  The  big  punishment 
of  all,  when  you've  broken  a  law,  is  that  you're  outside. 
If  it's  a  small  break,  you're  not  much  over  the  sill.  If  it's 
a  big  break,  you're  absolutely  out.  Outside,  Amabel,  out 
side  1 "  He  never  used  the  civil  prefix  before  her  name,  and 


THE  PRISONER 

Anne  wondered  again  whether  the  intimacy  of  the  letters 
accounted  for  this  sweet  informality.  "  You're  banished. 
What's  worse  than  that?  " 

"  Oh,  but,"  said  she,  her  plain,  beautiful  face  beam 
ing  divinity  on  him  as  one  of  the  children  of  men,  "  I  don't 
want  them  to  be  banished.  If  anybody  has  sinned  —  has 
broken  the  law  —  I  want  him  to  be  educated.  That's 
all." 

"  Look  here,"  said  JefF.  He  bent  forward  to  her  and 
laid  the  finger  of  one  trade-stained  hand  in  the  other  palm. 
"  You're  emasculating  the  whole  nation.  Let  us  be  edu 
cated,  but  let  us  take  our  good  hard  whacks." 

"  Hear !  hear !  "  said  Choate,  speaking  mildly  but  yet  as 
a  lawyer,  who  spent  his  life  in  presenting  liabilities  for  or 
against  punishment.  "  That's  hot  stuff." 

"  I  believe  in  law,"  said  Jeff  rapidly.  "  Sometimes  I 
think  that's  all  I  believe  in  now." 

Anne  and  Lydia  looked  at  him  in  a  breathless  waiting 
upon  his  words.  He  had  begun  to  justify  himself  to  their 
crescent  belief  in  him,  the  product  of  the  years.  His 
father  also  waited,  but  tremulously.  Here  was  the  boy  he 
had  wanted  back,  but  he  had  not  so  very  much  strength 
to  accord  even  a  fulfilled  delight.  Jeff,  forgetful  of  every 
body  but  the  old  sybil  he  was  looking  at,  sure  of  her  com 
prehension  if  not  her  agreement,  went  on. 

"  I'd  rather  have  bad  laws  than  no  laws.  I  believe  in 
Sparta.  I  believe  in  the  Catholic  Church,  if  only  because 
it  has  fasts  and  penances.  We've  got  to  toe  the  mark. 
If  we  don't,  something's  got  to  give  it  to  us  good  and 
hard,  the  harder  the  better,  too.  Are  we  children  to  be 
let  off  from  the  consequences  of  what  we've  done?  No, 
by  God !  We're  men  and  we've  got  to  learn." 

Suddenly  his  eyes  left  Miss  Amabel's  quickened  face  and 
he  glanced  about  him,  aware  of  the  startled  tensity  of  gaze 


THE  PRISONER  113 

among  the  others.  Moore,  with  a  little  book  on  his  knee, 
was  writing  rapidly. 

"  Notes?"  Jeff  asked  him  shortly.     "No,  you  don't." 

He  got  up  and  extended  his  hand  for  the  book,  and 
Moore  helplessly,  after  a  look  at  Miss  Amabel,  as  if  to  ask 
whether  she  meant  to  see  him  bullied,  delivered  it.  Jeff 
whirled  back  two  leaves,  tore  them  out,  crumpled  them  in 
his  hand  and  tossed  them  into  the  fireplace. 

"  You  can't  do  that,  Moore,"  he  said  indifferently,  and 
Choate  murmured  a  monosyllabic  assent. 

Moore  never  questioned  the  bullying  he  so  prodigally 
got.  He  never  had  at  college  even ;  he  was  as  ready  to 
fawn  the  next  day.  It  seemed  as  if  the  inner  man  were 
small,  too  small  for  sound  resentment.  Jeff  sat  down 
again.  He  looked  depressed,  his  countenance  without  in 
ward  light.  But  Lydia  and  Anne  had  rediscovered  him. 
Again  he  was  their  hero,  reclothed  indeed  in  finer 
mail.  Miss  Amabel  rose  at  once.  She  shook  hands  with 
the  colonel,  and  asked  Anne  and  Lydia  to  come  to  see 
her. 

"  Don't  you  do  something,  you  two  girls  ?  "  she  asked, 
with  her  inviting  smile.  "  I'm  sure  Jeff  wrote  me  so." 

"  We  dance,"  said  Lydia,  in  a  bubbling  bright  voice, 
as  if  she  had  run  forward  to  be  sure  to  get  the  chance  of 
answering.  "  Let  us  come  and  dance  for  you.  We  can 
dance  all  sorts  of  things." 

And  Lydia  was  so  purely  childlike  and  dear,  after  this 
talk  of  punishments  and  duties,  that  involuntarily  they  all 
laughed  and  she  looked  abashed. 

"  Perhaps  you  know  folk-dances,"  said  Miss  Amabel. 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Lydia,  getting  back  her  spirit. 
"  There  isn't  one  we  don't  know." 

And  they  laughed  again  and  Miss  Amabel  tied  on  her 
bonnet  and  went  away  attended  by  Choate,  with  Weedon 


1U  THE  PRISONER 

Moore  a  pace  behind,  holding  his  hat,  until  he  got  out  of 
the  house,  as  it  might  be  at  a  grotesque  funeral. 

Miss  Amabel  had  called  back  to  Lydia : 

"  You  must  come  and  train  my  classes  in  their  national 
dancing." 

Lydia,  behind  the  colonel  and  Jeff  as  they  stood  at  the 
front  door,  seized  Anne's  hand  and  did  a  few  ecstatic  little 
steps. 

The  colonel  was  bright-eyed  and  satisfied  with  his  even 
ing.  "  Jeff,"  said  he,  before  they  turned  to  separate,  "  I 
always  thought  you  were  meant  for  a  writer." 

Jeff  looked  at  him  in  a  dull  denial,  as  if  he  wondered  how 
any  man,  life  being  what  it  is,  could  seek  to  bound  the 
lot  of  another  man.  His  face,  flushed  darkly,  was  seamed 
with  feeling. 

"  Father,"  said  he,  in  a  voice  of  mysterious  reproach, 
"  I  don't  know  what  I  was  meant  to  be." 


It  was  Lydia  who  found  out  what  Jeff  meant  himself  to 
be,  for  the  next  day,  in  course  of  helping  Mary  Nellen, 
she  went  to  his  door  with  towels.  Mr.  Jeffrey  had  gone 
out,  Mary  Nellen  said.  She  had  seen  him  spading  in  the 
orchard,  and  if  Miss  Lydia  wanted  to  carry  up  the  towels ! 
there  was  the  dusting,  too.  Lydia,  at  the  open  door, 
stopped,  for  Jeff  was  sitting  at  his  writing  table,  paper 
before  him.  He  flicked  a  look  at  her,  absently,  as  at  an 
intruder  as  insignificant  as  undesired,  and  because  the 
sacredness  of  his  task  was  plain  to  her  she  took  it  humbly. 
But  Jeff,  then  actually  seeing  her,  rose  and  put  down  his 
pen. 

"  I'll  take  those,"  he  said. 

It  troubled  him  vaguely  to  find  her  and  Anne  doing 
tasks.  He  had  a  worried  sense  that  he  and  the  colonel 
were  living  on  their  kind  offices,  and  he  felt  like  assuring 
Lydia  she  shouldn't  carry  towels  about  for  either  of  them 
long.  Then,  as  she  did  not  yield  them  but  looked,  house 
keeper-wise,  at  the  rack  still  loaded  with  its  tumbled  re 
serves,  he  added: 

"  Give  them  here." 

"  You  mustn't  leave  your  writing,"  said  Lydia  primly  if 
shyly,  and  delivered  up  her  charge. 

Jeff  stepped  out  after  her  into  the  hall.  He  had  left 
dull  issues  at  his  table,  and  Lydia  seemed  very  sweet,  her 
faith  in  him  chiefly,  though  he  didn't  want  any  more  of  it. 

"  Don't  worry  about  my  writing,"  said  he. 

115 


116  THE  PRISONER 

"  Oh,  no,"  she  answered,  turning  on  him  the  clarity  of 
her  glance.  "  I  shouldn't.  Authors  never  want  it  talked 
about." 

"  That's  not  it,"  said  he.  She  found  him  tremendously 
in  earnest.  "  I'm  not  an  author." 

"  But  you  will  be  when  this  is  written." 

"  I  don't  know,"  he  said,  "  how  I  can  make  you  see. 
The  whole  thing  is  so  foreign  to  your  ideas  about  books 
and  life.  It  only  happened  that  I  met  a  man  —  in 
there  — "  he  hesitated  over  it,  not  as  regarding  delicacies 
but  only  as  they  might  affect  her  — "  a  man  like  a  million 
others,  some  of  'em  in  prison,  more  that  ought  to  be. 
Well,  he  talked  to  me.  I  saw  what  brought  him  where  he 
was.  It  was  picturesque." 

"  You  want  other  people  to  understand,"  said  Lydia, 
bright-eyed,  now  she  was  following  him.  "  For  —  a  warn 
ing.'^ 

His  frown  was  heavy.     Now  he  was  trying  to  follow  her. 

"  No,"  he  said,  "  you're  off  there.  I  don't  take  things 
that  way.  But  I  did  see  it  so  plain  I  wanted  everybody 
to  see  it,  too.  Maybe  that  was  why  I  did  want  to  write  it 
down.  Maybe  I  wanted  to  write  it  for  myself,  so  I  should 
see  it  plainer.  It  fascinated  me." 

Lydia  felt  a  helpless  yearning,  because  things  were  be 
ing  so  hard  for  him.  She  wished  for  Anne  who  always 
knew,  and  with  a  word  could  help  you  out  when  your  eluci 
dation  failed. 

"  You  see,"  Jeff  was  going  on,  "  there's  this  kind  of  a 
brute  born  into  the  world  now,  the  kind  that  knows  how 
to  make  money,  and  as  soon  as  he's  discovered  his  knack, 
he's  got  the  mania  to  make  more.  It's  an  obligation,  an 
obsession.  Maybe  it's  only  the  game.  He's  in  it,  just 
as  much  as  if  he'd  got  a  thousand  men  behind  him,  all  loot 
ing  territory.  It  might  be  for  a  woman.  But  it's  the 


THE  PRISONER  117 

game.  And  it's  a  queer  game.  It  cuts  him  off.  He's 
outside." 

And  here  Lydia  had  a  simple  and  very  childlike  thought, 
so  inevitable  to  her  that  she  spoke  without  consideration. 

"  You  were  outside,  too." 

Jeff  gave  a  little  shake  of  the  head,  as  if  that  didn't 
matter  now  he  was  here  and  explaining  to  her. 

"  And  the  devil  of  it  is,  after  they're  once  outside  they 
don't  know  they  are." 

"  Do  you  mean,  when  they've  done  something  and  been 
found  guilty  and  — " 

"  I  mean  all  along  the  line.  When  they've  begun  to 
think  they'll  make  good,  when  they've  begun  to  play  the 
game." 

"  For  money  ?  " 

"  Yes,  for  money,  for  pretty  gold  and  dirty  bills  and 
silver.  That's  what  it  amounts  to,  when  you  get  down  to 
it,  behind  all  the  bank  balances  and  equities.  There's  a 
film  that  grows  over  your  eyes,  you  look  at  nothing 
else.  You  don't  think  about  — "  his  voice  dropped  and  he 
glanced  out  at  the  walled  orchard  as  if  it  were  even  a 
sacred  place  — "  you  don't  think  about  grass,  and  dirt, 
and  things.  You're  thinking  about  the  game." 

"  Well,"  said  Lydia  joyously,  seeing  a  green  pathway 
out,  "  now  you've  found  it's  so,  you  don't  need  to  think 
about  it  any  more." 

"  That's  precisely  it,"  said  he  heavily.  "  I've  got  to 
think  about  it  all  the  time.  I've  got  to  make  good." 

"  In  the  same  way  ?  "  said  Lydia,  looking  up  at  him 
childishly.  "  With  money  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  he,  "  with  money.  It's  all  I  know.  And 
without  capital,  too.  And  I'm  going  to  keep  my  head,  and 
do  it  within  the  law.  Yes,  by  God !  within  the  law.  But 
I  hate  to  do  it.  I  hate  it  like  the  devil." 


118  THE  PRISONER 

He  looked  so  hard  with  resolution  that  she  took  the 
resolution  for  pride,  though  she  could  not  know  whether  it 
was  a  fine  pride  or  a  heaven-defying  one. 

"You  won't  do  just  what  you  did  before?"  asserted 
Lydia,  out  of  her  faith  in  him. 

"  Oh,  yes,  I  shall." 

She  opened  terrified  eyes  upon  him. 

"  Be  a  promoter?  " 

"  I  don't  know  what  I  shall  be.  But  I  know  the  money 
game,  and  I  shall  have  to  play  it  and  make  good." 

She  ventured  a  question  touching  on  the  fancies  that 
were  in  her  mind,  part  of  the  bewildering  drama  that  might 
attend  on  his  return.  She  faltered  it  out.  It  seemed  too 
splendid  really  to  assault  fortune  like  that.  And  yet  per 
haps  not  too  splendid  for  him.  This  was  the  question. 

"  And  pay  back  — "  There  she  hesitated,  and  he  fin 
ished  for  her. 

"  The  money  I  lost  in  a  hole?  Well,  we'll  see."  This 
last  sounded  indulgent,  as  if  he  might  add,  "  little  sister  ". 

Lydia  plucked  up  spirit. 

"  There's  something  else  I  hoped  you'd  do  first." 

"What  is  it?" 

"  I  want  you  to  prove  you're  innocent." 

She  found  herself  breathless  over  the  words.  They 
brought  her  very  near  him,  and  after  all  she  was  not  sure 
what  kind  of  brother  he  was,  save  that  he  had  to  be 
supremely  loved.  He  looked  pale  to  her  now,  of  a  yel 
lowed,  unhappy  hue,  and  he  was  staring  at  her  fixedly. 

"  Innocent !  "  he  repeated.  "  What  do  you  mean  by  in 
nocent?  " 

Lydia  took  heart  again,  since  he  really  did  invite  her 
on. 

"  Why,  of  course,"  she  said,  "  we  all  know  —  Farvie 
and  Anne  and  I  —  we  know  you  never  did  it." 


THE  PRISONER  119 

"Did  what?" 

"Lost  all  that  money.     Took  it  away  from  people." 

The  softness  of  her  voice  was  moving  to  him.  He  saw 
she  meant  him  very  well  indeed. 

"  Lydia,"  said  he,  "  I  lost  the  money.  Don't  make  any 
mistake  about  that." 

"  Yes,  you  were  a  promoter,"  she  reminded  him.  "  You 
were  trying  to  get  something  on  the  market."  She  seemed 
to  be  assuring  him,  in  an  agonised  way,  of  his  own  good 
faith.  "  And  people  bought  shares.  And  you  took  their 
money.  And — "  her  voice  broke  here  in  a  sob  of  irre 
pressible  sympathy  — "  and  you  lost  it." 

"  Yes,"  said  he  patiently.  "  I  found  myself  in  a  tight 
place  and  the  unexpected  happened  —  the  inconceivable. 
The  market  went  to  pieces.  And  of  course  it  was  at  the 
minute  I  was  asked  to  account  for  the  funds  I  had.  I 
couldn't.  So  I  was  a  swindler.  I  was  tried.  I  was  sen 
tenced,  and  I  went  to  prison.  That's  all." 

"  Oh,"  said  Lydia  passionately,  "  but  do  you  suppose 
we  don't  know  you're  not  the  only  person  concerned? 
Don't  you  suppose  we  know  there's  somebody  else  to 
blame?" 

Jeff  turned  on  her  a  sudden  look  so  like  passion  of  a 
sort  that  she  trembled  back  from  him.  Why  should  he  be 
angry  with  her?  Did  he  stand  by  Reardon  to  that  ex 
tent? 

"What  do  you  mean?"  he  asked  her.  "Who's  been 
talking  to  you  ?  " 

"  We've  all  been  talking,"  said  Lydia,  with  a  frank 
simplicity,  "  Farvie  and  Anne  and  I.  Of  course  we've 
talked.  Especially  Anne  and  I.  We  knew  you  weren't  to 
blame." 

Jeff  turned  away  from  her  and  went  back  into  his  room. 
He  shut  the  door,  and  yet  so  quietly  that  she  could  not 


120  THE  PRISONER 

feel  reproved.  Only  she  was  sad.  The  way  of  being  a 
sister  was  a  harder  one  than  she  had  looked  for.  But  she 
felt  bound  to  him,  even  by  stronger  and  stronger  cords. 
He  was  hers,  Farvie's  and  Anne's  and  hers,  however  un 
likely  he  was  to  take  hold  of  his  innocence  with  firm  hands 
and  shake  it  in  the  public  face. 

Jeff,  in  his  room,  stood  for  a  minute  or  more,  hands  in 
his  pockets,  staring  at  the  wall  and  absently  thinking  he 
remembered  the  paper  on  it  from  his  college  days.  But 
he  recalled  himself  from  the  obvious.  He  looked  into  his 
inner  chamber  of  mind  where  he  had  forbidden  himself  to 
glance  since  he  had  come  home,  lest  he  see  there  a  con 
fusion  of  idea  and  desire  that  should  make  him  the  weaker 
in  carrying  out  the  inevitabilities  of  his  return.  There 
was  one  thing  in  decency  to  be  expected  of  him  at  this 
point:  to  give  his  father  a  period  of  satisfaction  before  he 
left  him  to  do  what  he  had  not  yet  clearly  determined  on. 
It  was  sufficiently  convincing  to  tell  Lydia  he  intended  to 
make  good,  but  he  had  not  much  idea  what  he  meant  by 
it.  He  was  conscious  chiefly  that  he  felt  marred  some 
how,  jaded,  harassed  by  life,  smeared  by  his  experience  of 
living  in  a  gentlemanly  jail.  The  fact  that  he  had  left  it 
did  not  restore  to  him  his  old  feeling  of  owning  the  earth. 
He  had,  from  the  moment  of  his  conviction  and  sentence, 
been  outside,  and  his  present  liberty  could  not  at  once  con 
vey  him  inside. 

He  was,  he  knew,  for  one  thing,  profoundly  tired. 
Nothing,  he  felt  sure,  could  give  him  back  the  old  sense  of 
air  in  his  lungs.  Confinement  had  not  deprived  him  of 
air.  He  had  smiled  grimly  to  himself  once  or  twice,  as 
he  thought  what  the  sisters'  idea  of  his  prison  was  likely  to 
be.  They  probably  had  conjured  up  fetid  dungeons. 
There  were  chains  of  a  surety,  certainly  a  clank  or  two. 
As  he  remembered  it,  there  was  a  clanking  in  his  mind, 


THE  PRISONER 

quite  sufficient  to  fulfil  the  prison  ideal.  And  then  he 
thought,  with  a  sudden  desire  for  man's  company,  the  ex 
pectation  that  would  take  you  for  granted,  that  he'd  go 
down  and  see  old  Reardon.  Reardon  had  not  been  to 
call,  but  Jeff  was  too  sick  of  solitariness  to  mind  that. 

He  went  out  without  seeing  anybody,  the  colonel,  he 
knew,  being  at  his  gentle  task  of  cramming  for  Mary  Nel- 
len's  evening  lesson.  Jeff  had  not  been  in  the  street  since 
the  walk  he  had  cut  short  with  Madame  Beattie.  He  felt 
strange  out  in  the  world  now,  as  if  the  light  blinded  him 
or  the  sun  burned  him,  or  there  were  an  air  too  chill  — 
all,  he  reflected,  in  a  grim  discovery,  the  consequence  of 
being  outside  and  not  wanting  houses  to  see  you  or  per 
sons  to  bow  and  offer  friendly  hands.  Reardon  would 
blow  such  vapours  away  with  a  breath  of  his  bluff  voice. 
But  as  he  reached  the  vestibule  of  the  yellow  house,  Rear 
don  himself  was  coming  out  and  Jeff,  with  a  sick  surprise, 
understood  that  Reardon  was  not  prepared  to  see  him. 


XI 

Reardon  stood  there  in  his  middle-aged  ease,  the  picture 
of  a  man  who  has  nothing  to  do  more  hazardous  than  to 
take  care  of  himself.  PI  is  hands  were  exceedingly  well- 
kept.  His  cravat,  of  a  dull  blue,  was  suited  to  his  fresh- 
coloured  face,  and,  though  this  is  too  far  a  quest  for  the 
casual  eye,  his  socks  also  were  blue,  an  admirable  match. 
Jeff  was  not  accustomed,  certainly  in  these  later  years,  to 
noting  clothes ;  but  he  did  feel  actually  unkempt  before 
this  mirror  of  the  time.  Yet  why?  For  in  the  old  days 
also  Reardon  had  been  rather  vain  of  outward  conformity. 
He  had  striven  then  to  make  up  by  every  last  nicety  of 
dress  and  manner  for  the  something  his  origin  had  lacked. 
It  was  not  indeed  the  perfection  of  his  dress  that  discon 
certed  ;  it  was  the  kind  of  man  Reardon  had  grown  to  be  : 
for  of  him  the  clothes  did,  in  their  degree,  testify.  Jeffrey 
was  conscious  that  every  muscle  in  Reardon's  body  had  its 
just  measure  of  attention.  Reardon  had  organised  the 
care  of  that  being  who  was  himself.  He  had  provided 
richly  for  his  future,  wiped  out  his  past  where  it  threat 
ened  to  gall  him,  and  was  giving  due  consideration  to  his 
present.  He  meant  supremely  to  be  safe,  and  to  that  end 
he  had  entrenched  himself  on  every  side.  Jeff  felt  a  very 
disorganised,  haphazard  sort  of  being  indeed  before  so 
complete  a  creature.  And  Reardon,  so  far  from  breaking 
into  the  old  intimacy  that  Jeff  had  seen  still  living  behind 
them  in  a  sunny  calm,  only  waiting  for  the  gate  to  be 
opened  on  it  again,  stood  there  distinctly  embarrassed  and 

nothing  more. 

122 


THE  PRISONER  123 

"Jeff!"  said  he.  "How  are  you?"  That  was  not 
enough.  He  found  it  lacking,  and  added,  with  a  deepened 
shade  of  warmth,  "How  are  you,  old  man?" 

Now  he  put  out  his  hand,  but  it  had  been  so  long  in 
coming  that  Jeff  gave  no  sign  of  seeing  it. 

"  I'll  walk  along  with  you,"  he  said. 

"  No,  no."  Reardon  was  calling  upon  reserves  of  de 
cency  and  good  feeling.  "  You'll  do  nothing  of  the  sort. 
Come  in." 

"  No,"  said  Jeff.     "  I  was  walking.     I'll  go  along  with 

you." 

Now  Reardon  came  down  the  steps  and  put  an  insistent 
hand  on  his  shoulder. 

"  Jeff,"  said  he,  "  come  on  in.  You  surprised  me. 
That's  the  truth.  I  wasn't  prepared.  I  hadn't  looked 
for  you." 

Jeff  went  up  the  steps ;  it  seemed,  indeed,  emotional  to 
do  less.  But  at  the  door  he  halted  and  his  eyes  sought 
the  chairs  at  hand. 

"  Can't  we,"  said  he,  "  sit  down  here?  " 

Reardon,  with  a  courteous  acquiescence,  went  past  one 
of  the  chairs,  leaving  it  for  him,  and  dropped  into  another. 
Jeff  took  his,  and  found  nothing  to  say.  One  of  them  had 
got  to  make  a  civil  effort.  Jeff,  certain  he  had  no  business 
there,  took  his  hand  at  it. 

"  This  was  the  old  Pelham  house?  " 

Reardon  assented,  in  evident  relief,  at  so  remote  a  topic. 

"  I  bought  it  six  years  ago.  Had  it  put  in  perfect  re 
pair.  The  plumbing  cost  me  —  well !  you  know  what  old 
houses  are." 

Jeff  turned  upon  him. 

"Jim,"  said  he  quietly,  "what's  the  matter?" 

"  Nothing's  the  matter,"  said  Reardon,  blustering. 
"  My  dear  boy  1  I'm  no  end  glad  to  see  you." 


THE  PRISONER 

"  Oh,  no,"  said  Jeff.  "  No,  you're  not.  You've  kicked 
me  out.  What's  the  reason?  My  late  residence?  Oh, 
come  on,  man!  Didn't  expect  to  see  me?  Didn't  want 
to?  That  it?" 

Suddenly  the  telephone  rang1,  and  the  English  man-serv 
ant  came  out  and  said,  with  a  perfect  decorum : 

"  Mrs.  Blake  at  the  telephone,  sir." 

Jeff  was  looking  at  Reardon  when  he  got  the  message 
and  saw  his  small  blue  eyes  suffused  and  the  colour  hot  in 
his  cheeks.  The  blond  well-kept  man  seemed  to  be  swelling 
with  embarrassment. 

"  Excuse  me,"  he  said,  got  up  and  went  inside,  and  Blake 
heard  his  voice  in  brief  replies. 

When  he  came  back,  he  looked  harassed,  fatigued  even. 
His  colour  had  gone  down  and  left  him  middle-aged.  Jeff 
had  not  only  been  awaiting  him,  but  his  glance  had,  as  well. 
His  eyes  were  fixed  upon  the  spot  where  Reardon's  face, 
when  he  again  occupied  his  chair,  would  be  ready  to  be 
interrogated. 

"  What  Mrs.  Blake?  "  Jeff  asked. 

Reardon  sat  down  and  fussed  with  the  answer. 

"What  Mrs.  Blake?"  he  repeated,  and  flicked  a  spot 
of  dust  from  his  trousered  ankle  lifted  to  inspection. 

"  Yes,"  said  Jeff,  with  an  outward  quiet.  "  Was  that 
my  wife  ?  " 

Again  the  colour  rose  in  Reardon's  face.  It  was  the 
signal  of  an  emotion  that  gave  him  courage. 

"  Why,  yes,"  he  said,  "  it  was." 

"What  did  she  want?" 

"  Jeff,"  said  Reardon,  "  it's  no  possible  business  of 
yours  what  Esther  wants." 

"You  caliber  Esther?" 

"  I  did  then." 

An  outraged  instinct  of  possession  was  risinjr  in  Rear- 


THE  PRISONER 

don.  Esther  suddenly  meant  more  to  him  than  she  had  in 
all  this  time  when  she  had  been  meaning  a  great  deal.  Als 
ton  Choate  had  power  to  rouse  this  primitive  rage  in  him, 
but  he  could  always  conquer  it  by  reasoning  that  Alston 
wouldn't  take  her  if  he  could  get  her.  There  were  too 
many  inherited  reserves  in  Alston.  Actually,  Reardon 
thought,  Alston  wouldn't  really  want  a  woman  he  had  to 
take  unguardedly.  But  here  was  the  man  who,  by  every 
rigour  of  conventional  life,  had  a  right  to  her.  It  could 
hardly  be  borne.  Reardon  wasn't  used  to  finding  himself 
dominated  by  primal  impulses.  They  weren't,  his  middle- 
aged  conclusions  told  him,  safe.  But  now  he  got  away 
from  himself  slightly  and  the  freedom  of  it,  while  it  was 
exciting,  made  him  ill  at  ease.  The  impulse  to  speak 
really  got  the  better  of  him. 

"  Look  here,  Blake,"  he  said  —  and  both  of  them  real 
ised  that  it  was  the  first  time  he  had  used  that  surname; 
Jeff  had  always  been  a  boy  to  him  — "  it's  very  unwise  of 
you  to  come  back  here  at  all." 

"  Very  unwise  ?  "  Jeff  repeated,  in  an  unmixed  amaze 
ment,  "  to  come  back  to  Addington?  My  father's  here." 

"  Your  father  needn't  have  been  here,"  pursued  Rear 
don  doggedly.  Entered  upon  what  seemed  a  remonstrance 
somebody  ought  to  make,  he  was  committed,  he  thought, 
to  going  on.  "  It  was  an  exceedingly  ill-judged  move  for 
you  all,  very  ill-judged  indeed." 

Jeff  sat  looking  at  him  from  a  sternness  that  made  a 
definite  setting  for  the  picture  of  his  wonder.  Yet  he 
seemed  bent  only  upon  understanding. 

"  I  don't  say  you  came  back  to  make  trouble,"  Rear 
don  went  on,  pursued  now  by  the  irritated  certainty  that 
he  had  adopted  a  course  and  had  got  to  justify  it.  "  But 
you're  making  it." 

"  How  am  I  making  it  ?  " 


126  THE  PRISONER 

"  Why,  you're  making  her  damned  uncomfortable." 

"Who?" 

Reardon  had  boggled  over  the  name.  He  hardly  liked 
to  say  Esther  again,  since  it  had  been  ill-received,  and  he 
certainly  wouldn't  say  "  your  wife ".  But  he  had  to 
choose  and  did  it  at  a  jump. 

"  Esther,"  he  said,  fixing  upon  that  as  the  least  of 
fensive  to  himself. 

"  How  am  I  making  my  wife  uncomfortable  ?  "  Jeff  in 
quired. 

"  Why,  here  you  are,"  Reardon  blundered,  "  almost 
within  a  stone's  throw.  She  can't  even  go  into  the  street 
without  running  a  chance  of  meeting  you." 

Jeff  threw  back  his  head  and  laughed. 

"  No,"  he  said,  "  she  can't,  that's  a  fact.  She  can't  go 
into  the  street  without  running  the  risk  of  meeting  me. 
But  if  you  hadn't  told  me,  Reardon,  I  give  you  my  word  I 
shouldn't  have  thought  of  the  risk  she  runs.  No,  I 
shouldn't  have  thought  of  it." 

Reardon  drew  a  long  breath.  He  had,  it  seemed  to  him, 
after  all  done  wisely.  The  note  of  human  brotherhood 
came  back  into  his  voice,  even  an  implication  that  pres 
ently  it  might  be  actually  soothing. 

"  Well,  now  you  do  see,  you'll  agree  with  me.  You  can't 
annoy  a  woman.  You  can't  keep  her  in  a  state  of  appre 
hension." 

Jeff  had  risen,  and  Reardon,  too,  got  on  his  feet.  Jeff 
seemed  to  be  considering,  and  very  gravely,  and  Reardon, 
frowning,  watched  him. 

"  No,"  said  Jeff.  "  No.  Certainly  you  can't  annoy  a 
woman."  He  turned  upon  Reardon,  but  with  no  sugges 
tion  of  resentment.  "  What  makes  you  think  I  should  an 
noy  her  ?  " 

"  Why,  it  isn't  what  you'd  wilfully  do."     Now  that  the 


THE  PRISONER  127 

danger  of  violence  was  over,  Reardon  felt  that  he  could 
meet  his  man  with  a  perfect  reasonableness,  and  tell  him 
what  nobody  else  was  likely  to.  "  It's  your  being  here. 
She  can't  help  going  back.  She  remembers  how  things 
used  to  be.  And  then  she  gets  apprehensive." 

"  How  they  used  to  be,"  Jeff  repeated  thoughtfully. 
He  sounded  stupid  standing  there  and  able,  apparently, 
to  do  nothing  better  than  repeat.  "How  was  that? 
How  do  you  understand  they  used  to  be?  " 

Reardon  lost  patience.  You  could  afford  to,  evidently, 
with  so  numb  an  antagonist. 

"  Why,  you  know,"  he  said.  "  You  remember  how 
things  used  to  be." 

Jeff  looked  full  at  him  now,  and  there  was  a  curious 
brightness  in  his  eyes. 

"  I  don't,"  he  said.  "  I  should  have  said  I  did,  but  now 
I  hear  you  talk  I  give  you  my  word  I  don't.  You'll 
have  to  tell  me." 

"  She  never  blamed  you,"  said  Reardon  expansively. 
He  was  beginning  to  pity  Jeff,  the  incredible  density  of 
him,  and  he  spoke  incautiously.  "  She  understood  the 
reasons  for  it.  You  were  having  your  business  worries 
and  you  were  harassed  and  nervous.  Of  course  she  under 
stood.  But  that  didn't  prevent  her  from  being  afraid  of 
you." 

"  Afraid  of  me ! "  Jeff  took  a  step  forward  and  put 
one  hand  on  a  pillar  of  the  porch.  The  action  looked  al 
most  as  if  he  feared  to  trust  himself,  finding  some  weakness 
in  his  legs  to  match  this  assault  upon  the  heart.  "  Es 
ther  afraid  of  me?  " 

Reardon,  feeling  more  and  more  benevolent,  dilated  vis 
ibly. 

"  Most  natural  thing  in  the  world.  You  can  see  how  it 
would  be.  I  suppose  her  mind  keeps  harking  back,  going 


128  THE  PRISONER 

over  things,  you  know;  and  here  you  are  on  the  same 
street,  as  you  might  say." 

"  No,"  said  Jeff,  stupidly,  as  if  that  were  the  case  in 
point,  "  it  isn't  the  same  street." 

He  withdrew  his  hand  from  the  pillar  now  with  a  de 
cisiveness  that  indicated  he  had  got  to  depend  on  his 
muscles  at  once,  and  started  down  the  steps.  Reardon 
made  an  indeterminate  movement  after  him  and  called  out 
something;  but  Jeff  did  not  halt.  He  went  along  the 
driveway,  past  the  proudly  correct  shrubs  and  brilliant 
turf  and  into  the  street.  He  had  but  the  one  purpose  of 
getting  to  Esther  as  soon  as  possible.  As  he  strode  along, 
he  compassed  in  memory  all  the  seasons  of  passion  from 
full  bloom  to  withering  since  he  saw  her  last.  When  he 
went  away  from  her  to  fulfil  his  sentence,  he  had  felt  that 
identity  with  her  a  man  must  recognise  for  a  wife  passion 
ately  beloved.  He  had  left  her  in  a  state  of  nervous  col 
lapse,  an  ignoble,  querulous  breakdown,  due,  he  had  to  ex 
plain  to  himself,  to  her  nature,  delicately  strung.  There 
was  nothing  heroic  about  the  way  she  had  taken  his  down 
fall.  But  the  exquisite  music  of  her,  he  further  tutored 
himself,  was  not  set  to  martial  strains.  She  was  the  love 
liness  of  the  twilight,  of  the  evening  star.  And  then, 
when  his  days  had  fallen  into  a  pallid  sequence,  she  had 
kept  silence.  It  was  as  if  there  had  been  no  wife,  no 
Esther.  At  first  he  made  wild  appeals  to  her,  to  his 
father  for  the  assurance  that  she  was  living  even.  Then 
one  day  in  the  autumn  when  he  was  watching  a  pale  ray 
of  sunshine  that  looked  as  if  it  had  been  strained  through 
sorrow  before  it  got  to  him,  the  verdict,  so  far  as  his  un 
derstanding  went,  was  inwardly  pronounced.  His  mind 
had  been  working  on  the  cruel  problem  and  gave  him,  un 
sought,  the  answer.  That  was  what  she  meant  to  do:  to 
separate  her  lot  from  his.  There  never  would  be  an 


THE  PRISONER  129 

Esther  any  more.     There  never  had  been  the  Esther  that 
made  the  music  of  his  strong  belief  in  her. 

At  first  he  could  have  dashed  himself  against  the  walls 
in  the  impotence  of  having  such  bereavement  to  bear  with 
none  of  the  natural  outlets  to  assauge  it.  Then  benefi 
cent  healing  passions  came  to  his  aid,  though  not,  he 
knew,  the  spiritual  ones.  He  descended  upon  scorn,  and 
finally  a  cold  acceptance  of  what  she  was.  And  then  she 
seemed  to  have  died,  and  in  the  inexorable  sameness  of  the 
days  and  nights  he  dismissed  her  memory,  and  he  medi 
tated  upon  life  and  what  might  be  made  of  it  by  men  who 
had  still  the  power  to  make.  But  now  hurrying  to  her 
along  the  quiet  street,  one  clarifying  word  explained  her, 
and,  unreasoningly,  brought  back  his  love.  She  had  been 
afraid  —  afraid  of  him  who  would,  in  the  old  phrase,  have, 
in  any  sense,  laid  down  his  life  for  her :  not  less  willingly, 
the  honourable  name  he  bore  among  honourable  men.  A 
sense  of  renewal  and  bourgeoning  was  upon  him,  that  feel 
ing  of  waking  from  a  dream  and  finding  the  beloved  is, 
after  all,  alive.  The  old  simple  words  came  back  to  him 
that  used  to  come  in  prison  when  they  dropped  molten 
anguish  upon  his  heart : 

— "  After  long  grief  and  pain, 
To  find  the  arms  of  my  true  love 
Round  me  once  again." 

At  least,  if  he  was  never  to  feel  the  soft  rapture  of  his 
love's  acceptance,  he  might  find  she  still  lived  in  her  beauty, 
and  any  possible  life  would  be  too  short  to  teach  her  not  to 
be  afraid.  He  reached  the  house  quickly  and,  with  the 
haste  of  his  courage,  went  up  the  steps  and  tried  the  latch. 
In  Addington  nearly  every  house  was  open  to  the  neigh 
bourly  hand.  But  of  late  Esther  had  taken  to  keeping 
her  bolt  slipped.  It  had  dated  from  the  day  Lydia  made 
hostile  entrance.  Finding  he  could  not  walk  in  unan- 


130  THE  PRISONER 

nouncedj  he  stood  for  a  moment,  his  intention  blank.  It 
did  not  seem  to  him  he  could  be  named  conventionally  to 
Esther,  who  was  afraid  of  him.  And  then,  by  a  hazard, 
Esther,  who  had  not  been  out  for  days,  and  yet  had  heard 
of  nobody's  meeting  him  abroad,  longed  for  the  air  and 
threw  wide  the  door.  There  she  was,  by  a  God-given 
chance.  It  was  like  predestined  welcome,  a  confirming  of 
his  hardihood.  In  spite  of  the  sudden  blight  and  shadow 
on  her  face,  instinctive  recoil  that  meant,  he  knew,  the  clos 
ing  of  the  door,  he  grasped  her  hands,  both  her  soft  white 
hands,  and  seemed,  to  his  anguished  mind,  to  be  dragging 
himself  in  by  them,  and  even  in  the  face  of  that  look  of 
hers  was  over  the  threshold  and  had  closed  the  door. 

"  Esther,"  he  said.     «  Esther,  dear !  " 

The  last  word  he  had  never  expected  to  use  to  her,  to 
any  woman  again.  Still  she  regarded  him  with  that  hor 
rified  aversion,  not  amazement,  he  saw.  It  was  as  if  she 
had  perhaps  expected  him,  had  anticipated  this  very  mo 
ment,  and  yet  was  not  ready,  because,  such  was  her  hard 
case,  no  ingenuity  could  possibly  prepare  her  for  it.  This 
he  saw,  and  it  ran  on  in  a  confirming  horrible  sequence 
from  Reardon's  speech. 

"  Esther ! "  he  repeated.  He  was  still  holding  her 
hands  and  feeling  they  had  no  possibility  of  escape  from 
each  other,  she  in  the  weakness  of  her  fear  and  he  in  pas 
sionate  ruth.  "  Are  you  afraid  of  me?  " 

That  was  her  cue. 

**  Yes,"  she  whispered. 

"  Were  you  always,  dear  ?  "  he  went  on,  carried  by  the 
tide  of  his  despairing  love.  (Or  was  it  love?  It  seemed 
to  him  like  love,  for  he  had  not  felt  emotion  such  as  this 
through  the  dry  pangs  of  his  isolation.)  "Years  ago, 
when  we  were  together  —  why,  you  weren't  afraid  then  ?  " 

"  Oh,  yes,  I  was,"  she  said.     Now  that  she  could  trans- 


THE  PRISONER  131 

late  his  emotion  in  any  degree,  she  felt  the  humility  of  his 
mind  toward  her,  and  began  to  taste  her  own  ascendancy. 
He  was  suing  to  her  in  some  form,  and  the  instinct  which, 
having  something  to  give  may  yet  withhold  it,  fed  her  sense 
of  power. 

"  Why,  we  were  happy,"  said  Jeffrey,  in  an  agony  of 
wonder.  "  That's  been  my  only  comfort  when  I  knew  we 
couldn't  be  happy  now.  I  made  you  happy,  dear." 

And  since  he  hung,  in  a  fevered  anticipation,  upon  her 
answer,  she  could  reply,  still  from  that  sense  of  being  the 
arbitress  of  his  peace : 

"  I  never  was  happy,  at  the  last.     I  was  afraid." 

He  dropped  her  hands. 

"What  of?"  he  said  to  himself  stupidly.  "In  God's 
name,  what  of?  " 

The  breaking  of  his  grasp  had  released  also  some  dar 
ing  in  her.  They  were  still  by  the  door,  but  he  was  be 
tween  her  and  the  stairs.  He  caught  the  glance  of  cal 
culation,  and  instinct  told  him  if  he  lost  her  now  he  should 
never  get  speech  of  her  again. 

"  Don't,"  he  said.     "  Don't  go." 

Again  he  laid  a  hand  upon  her  wrist,  and  anger  came 
into  her  face  instead  of  that  first  candid  horror.  She  had 
heard  something,  a  step  upstairs,  and  to  that  she  cried: 
"  Aunt  Patricia !  "  three  times,  in  a  piercing  entreaty. 

It  was  not  Madame  Beattie  who  came  to  the  stair-head 
and  looked  down ;  it  was  Rhoda  Knox.  After  the  glance 
she  went  away,  though  in  no  haste,  and  summoned  Madame 
Beattie,  who  appeared  in  a  silk  negligee  of  black  and  white 
swirls  like  witch's  fires  and,  after  one  indifferent  look, 
called  jovially: 

"Hullo,  Jeff!" 

But  she  came  down  the  stairs  and  Esther,  seeing  his 
marauding  entry  turned  into  something  like  a  visit  under 


THE  PRISONER 

social  sanction,  beat  upon  his  wrist  with  her  other  hand 
and  cried  two  hot  tears  of  angry  impotence. 

"  For  heaven's  sake,  Esther,"  Madame  Beattie  re 
marked,  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs,  "  what  are  you  acting 
like  this  for?  You  look  like  a  child  in  a  tantrum." 

Esther  ceased  to  be  in  a  tantrum.  She  had  a  sense  of, 
the  beautiful,  and  not  even  before  these  two  invaders  would 
she  make  herself  unfitting.  She  addressed  Madame  Beattie 
in  a  tone  indicating  her  determination  not  to  speak  to  Jeff 
again. 

"  Tell  him  to  let  me  go." 

Jeff  answered.  Passion  now  had  turned  him  cold,  but 
he  was  relentless,  a  man  embarked  on  a  design  to  which 
he  cannot  see  the  purpose  or  the  end,  but  who  means  to 
sail  straight  on. 

"  Esther,"  he  said,  "  I'm  going  to  see  you  now,  for  ten 
minutes,  for  half  an  hour.  You  may  keep  your  aunt  here 
if  you  like,  but  if  you  run  away  from  me  I  shall  follow 
you.  But  you  won't  run  away.  You'll  stay  right  here." 

He  dropped  her  wrist. 

"  Oh,  come  into  the  library,"  said  Madame  Beattie. 
"  I  can't  stand.  My  knees  are  creaking.  Come,  Esther, 
ask  your  husband  in." 

Madame  Beattie,  billowing  along  in  the  witch-patterned 
silk  and  clicking  on  prodigiously  high  heels  and  Esther 
with  her  head  haughtily  up,  led  the  way,  and  Jeff,  follow 
ing  them,  sat  down  as  soon  as  they  had  given  him  leave 
by  doing  it,  and  looked  about  the  room  with  a  faint  fool 
ish  curiosity  to  note  whether  it,  too,  had  changed.  Ma 
dame  Beattie  thrust  out  a  pretty  foot,  and  Esther, 
perched  on  the  piano  stool,  looked  rigidly  down  at  her 
trembling  hands.  She  was  very  pale.  Suddenly  she  re 
covered  herself,  and  turned  to  Madame  Beattie. 

"  He  had  just  come,"  she  said.     "  He  came  in.     I  didn't 


THE  PRISONER  133 

ask  him  to.  He  had  not — "  a  little  note  like  fright  or 
triumph  beat  into  her  voice  — "  he  had  not  —  kissed  me." 

She  turned  to  him  as  if  for  a  confirmation  he  could  not 
in  honesty  refuse  her,  and  Madame  Beattie  burst  into  a 
laugh,  one  of  perfect  acceptance  of  things  as  they  are, 
human  frailties  among  the  first. 

"  Esther,"  she  said,  "  you're  a  little  fool.  If  you  want 
a  divorce  what  do  you  give  yourself  away  for?  Your 
counsel  wouldn't  let  you." 

The  whole  implication  was  astounding  to  Jeff;  but  the 
only  thing  he  could  fix  definitely  was  the  concrete  pos 
sibility  that  she  had  counsel. 

"  Who  is  your  counsel,  Esther?  "  he  asked  her. 

But  Esther  had  gone  farther  than  discretion  bade. 

"  I  am  not  obliged  to  say,"  she  answered,  with  a  stub 
bornness  equal  to  his  own,  whatever  that  might  prove. 
"  I  am  not  obliged  to  say  anything.  But  I  do  think  I 
have  a  right  to  ask  you  to  tell  Aunt  Patricia  that  I  have 
not  taken  you  back,  in  any  sense  whatever.  Not  —  not 
condoned." 

She  slipped  on  the  word  and  he  guessed  that  it  had  been 
used  to  her  and  that  although  she  considered  it  of  some 
value,  she  had  not  technically  taken  it  in. 

"  What  had  you  to  condone  in  me,  Esther  ?  "  he  asked 
her  gently.  Suddenly  she  seemed  to  him  most  pathetic 
in  her  wilful  folly.  She  had  always  been,  she  would 
always  be,  he  knew,  a  creature  who  ruled  through  her 
weakness,  found  it  an  asset,  traded  on  it  perhaps,  and 
whereas  once  this  had  seemed  to  him  enchanting,  now,  in 
the  face  of  ill-fortune  it  looked  pitifully  inadequate  and 
base. 

"  I  was  afraid  of  you,"  she  insisted.     "  I  am  now." 

"  Well !  "  said  Jeff.  He  found  himself  smiling  at  Ma 
dame  Beattie,  and  she  was  answering  his  smile.  Perhaps 


134  THE  PRISONER 

it  was  rather  the  conventional  tribute  on  his  part,  to  con 
ceal  that  he  might  easily  have  thrown  himself  back  in  his 
chair  behind  the  shelter  of  his  hands,  or  gone  down  in  any 
upheaval  of  primal  emotions ;  and  perhaps  he  saw  in  her 
answer,  if  not  sympathy,  for  she  was  too  impersonal  for 
that,  a  candid  understanding  of  the  little  scene  and  an 
appreciation  of  its  dramatic  quality.  "  Then,"  said  he, 
after  his  monosyllable,  "  there  is  nothing  left  me  but  to 
go."  When  he  had  risen,  he  stood  looking  down  at  his 
wife's  beautiful  dusky  head.  Incredible  to  think  it  had 
ever  lain  on  his  breast,  or  that  the  fact  of  its  cherishing 
there  made  no  difference  to  her  embryo  heart !  A  tinge 
of  irony  came  into  his  voice.  "  And  I  am  willing  to  assure 
Madame  Beattie,"  he  proceeded,  "  in  the  way  of  evidence, 
that  you  have  not  in  any  sense  taken  me  back,  nor  have 
you  condoned  anything  I  may  have  done." 

As  he  was  opening  the  outer  door,  in  a  confusion  of 
mind  that  communicated  itself  disturbingly  to  his  eyes  and 
ears,  he  seemed  to  hear  Madame  Beattie  adjuring  Esther 
ruthlessly  not  to  be  a  fool. 

"  Why,  he's  a  man,  you  little  fool,"  he  heard  her  say, 
not  with  passion  but  a  negligent  scorn  ample  enough  to 
cover  all  the  failings  of  their  common  sex.  "  He's  more 
of  a  man  than  he  was  when  he  went  into  that  hideous 
place.  And  after  all,  who  sent  him  there?" 

Jeff  walked  out  and  closed  the  door  behind  him  with  an 
exaggerated  care.  It  hardly  seemed  as  if  he  had  the  right, 
except  in  a  salutary  humbleness,  even  to  touch  a  door 
which  shut  in  Esther  to  the  gods  of  home.  He  went  back 
to  his  father's  house,  and  there  was  Lydia  singing  as  she 
dusted  the  library.  He  walked  in  blindly  not  knowing 
whether  she  was  alone ;  but  here  was  a  face  and  a  voice, 
and  his  heart  was  sore.  Lydia,  at  sight  of  him,  laid  down 
Jier  cloth  and  came  to  meet  him.  Neither  (lid  she  think 


THE  PRISONER  135 

whether  they  were  alone,  though  she  did  remember  after 
ward  that  Farvie  had  gone  into  the  orchard  for  his  walk. 
Seeing  Jeff's  face,  she  knew  some  mortal  hurt  was  at  work 
within  him,  and  like  a  child,  she  went  to  him,  and  Jeff  put 
his  face  down  on  her  cheek,  and  his  cheek,  she  felt,  was 
wet.  And  so  they  stood,  their  arms  about  each  other,  and 
Lydia's  heart  beat  in  such  a  sick  tumult  of  rage  and  sor 
row  that  it  seemed  to  her  she  could  not  stand  so  and  up 
hold  the  heavy  weight  of  his  grief.  In  a  minute  she  whis 
pered  to  him: 

"  Have  you  seen  her  ?  " 

«  Yes." 

"  Was  she  —  cruel  ?  " 

"  Don't !  don't ! "  Jeff  said,  in  a  broken  voice. 

"  Do  you  love  her?  "  she  went  on,  in  an  inexorable  fierce 
ness. 

"  No !  no  !  no !  "  And  then  a  voice  that  did  not  seem  to 
be  his  and  yet  was  his,  came  from  him  and  overthrew  all 
his  old  traditions  of  what  he  had  been  and  what  he  must 
therefore  be :  "I  only  love  you." 

Then,  Lydia  knew,  when  she  thought  of  it  afterward,  in 
a  burning  wonder,  they  kissed,  and  their  tears  and  the  kiss 
seemed  as  one,  a  bond  against  the  woman  who  had  been 
cruel  to  him  and  an  eternal  pact  between  themselves.  And 
on  the  severing  of  the  kiss,  terrible  to  her  in  her  innocence, 
she  flung  herself  away  from  him  and  ran  upstairs.  Her 
flight  was  noiseless,  as  if  now  no  one  must  know,  but  he 
heard  the  shutting  of  a  door  and  the  sound  of  a  turning 
key. 


XII 

That  night  Anne  was  wakened  from  her  sleep  by  a  wisp 
of  a  figure  that  came  slipping  to  her  bedside,  announced 
only  by  the  cautious  breathing  of  her  name : 

"  Anne !  Anne !  "  her  sister  was  whispering  close  to  her 
cheek. 

"  Why,  Lyd,"  said  Anne,  "  what  is  it?  " 

The  figure  was  kneeling  now,  and  Anne  tried  to  rise  on 
her  elbow  to  invite  Lydia  in  beside  her.  But  Lydia  put  a 
hand  on  her  shoulder  and  held  her  still. 

"  Whisper,"  she  said,  and  then  was  silent  so  long  that 
Anne,  waiting  and  hearing  her  breathe,  stared  at  her  in  the 
dark  and  wondered  at  her. 

"  What  is  it,  lovey  ?  "  she  asked  at  length,  and  Lydia's 
breathing  hurried  into  sobs,  and  she  said  Anne's  name 
again,  and  then,  getting  a  little  control  of  herself,  asked 
the  question  that  had  brought  her. 

"  Anne,  when  people  kiss  you,  is  it  different  if  they  are 
men?" 

Now  Anne  did  rise  and  turned  the  clothes  back,  but 
Lydia  still  knelt  and  shivered. 

"  You've  been  having  bad  dreams,"  said  Anne.  "  Come 
in  here,  lovey,  and  Anne'll  sing  '  Lord  Rendal.'  " 

"  I  mean,"  said  Lydia,  from  her  knees,  "  could  anybody 
kiss  me,  except  Farvie,  and  not  have  it  like  Farvie  —  I 
mean  have  it  terrible  —  and  I  kiss  him  back  —  and  — 
Anne,  what  would  it  mean  ?  " 

"  That's  a  nightmare,"  said  Anne.     "  Now  you've  got 

136 


THE  PRISONER  137 

all  cool  and  waked  up,  you  run  back  to  bed,  unless  you'll 
get  in  here." 

Lydia  put  a  fevered  little  hand  upon  her. 

"  Anne,  you  must  tell  me,"  she  said,  catching  her  breath. 
"  Not  a  nightmare,  a  real  kiss,  and  neither  of  us  wanting 
to  kiss  anybody,  and  still  doing  it  and  not  being  sorry. 
Being  glad." 

She  sounded  so  like  herself  in  one  of  her  fiercenesses 
that  Anne  at  last  believed  she  was  wholly  awake  and  felt 
a  terror  of  her  own. 

"  Who  was  it,  Lydia  ?  "  she  asked  sternly.  "  Who  is  it 
you  are  thinking  about  ?  " 

"  Nobody,"  said  Lydia,  in  a  sudden  curt  withdrawal. 
She  rose  to  her  feet.  "  Yes,  it  was  a  nightmare." 

She  padded  out  of  the  room  and  softly  closed  the  door, 
and  Anne,  left  sitting  there,  felt  unreasoning  alarm.  She 
had  a  moment's  determination  to  follow  her,  and  then  she 
lay  down  again  and  thought  achingly  of  Lydia  who  was 
grown  up  and  was  yet  a  child.  And  still,  Anne  knew,  she 
had  to  come  to  woman's  destiny.  Lydia  was  so  compact 
of  sweetnesses  that  she  would  be  courted  and  married,  and 
who  was  Anne,  to  know  how  to  marry  her  rightly?  So 
she  slept,  after  a  troubled  interval ;  but  Lydia  lay  awake 
and  stared  the  darkness  through  as  if  it  held  new  paths 
to  her  desire.  What  was  her  desire?  She  did  not  know, 
save  that  it  had  all  to  do  with  Jeff.  He  had  been  cruelly 
used.  He  must  not  be  so  dealt  with  any  more.  Her  pas 
sion  for  his  well-being,  germinating  and  growing  through 
the  years  she  had  not  seen  him,  had  come  to  flower  in  a 
hot  resolve  that  he  should  be  happy  now.  And  in  some 
way,  some  headlong,  resistless  way,  she  knew  she  was  to 
make  his  happiness,  and  yet  in  her  allegiance  to  him  there 
was  trouble  and  pain.  He  had  made  her  into  a  new  crea 
ture.  The  kiss  had  done  it. 


138  THE  PRISONER 

He  would  not,  Lydia  thought,  have  kissed  her  if  it  were 
wrong,  and  yet  the  kiss  was  different  from  all  others  and 
she  must  never  tell.  Nor  must  it  come  again.  She  was 
plighted  to  him,  not  as  to  a  man  free  to  love  her,  but  to  his 
well-being;  and  it  was  all  most  sacred  and  not  to  be  un 
done.  She  was  exalted  and  she  was  shuddering  with  a 
formless  sense  of  the  earth  sway  upon  her.  She  had  ever 
been  healthy-minded  as  a  child;  even  the  pure  imaginings 
of  love  had  not  beguiled  her.  But  now  something  had 
come  out  of  the  earth  or  the  air  and  called  to  her,  and  she 
had  answered ;  and  because  it  was  so  inevitable  it  was  right 
—  yet  right  for  only  him  to  know.  Who  else  could  un 
derstand  ? 


XIII 

Lydia  did  not  think  she  dreaded  seeing  him  next  morn 
ing.  The  fabric  they  had  begun  to  weave  together  looked 
too  splendid  for  covering  trivial  little  fears  like  that.  Or 
was  it  strong  enough  to  cover  anything?  Yet  when  he 
came  into  the  room  where  they  were  at  breakfast  she  could 
not  look  at  him  with  the  same  unwavering  eyes.  She  had, 
strangely,  and  sadly  too,  the  knowledge  of  life.  But  if 
she  had  looked  at  him  she  would  have  seen  how  he  was 
changed.  He  had  pulled  himself  together.  Whether 
what  happened  or  what  might  happen  had  tutored  him,  he 
was  on  guard,  ready  —  for  himself  most  of  all.  And  after 
breakfast  where  Anne  and  the  colonel  had  contributed  the 
mild  commonplaces  useful  at  least  in  breaking  such  con 
straints,  he  followed  the  colonel  into  the  library  and  sat 
down  with  him.  The  colonel,  from  his  chair  by  the  win 
dow,  regarded  his  son  in  a  fond  approval.  Even  to  his 
eyes  where  Jeff  was  always  a  grateful  visitant,  the  more  so 
now  after  he  had  been  so  poignantly  desired,  he  was  this 
morning  the  more  manly  and  altogether  fit.  But  Jeff  was 
not  going  to  ingratiate  himself. 

"  Father,"  said  he,  "  I've  got  to  get  out." 

Trouble  of  a  wistful  sort  sprang  into  the  colonel's  face. 
But  he  spoke  with  a  reasonable  mildness,  desirous  chiefly 
of  meeting  his  boy  half  way. 

"  You  said  so.     But  not  yet,  I  hope." 

"  At  once,"  said  Jeffrey.  "  I  am  going  at  once.  To 
day  perhaps.  To-morrow  anyway.  I've  simply  got  to 
get  away." 

139 


140  THE  PRISONER 

The  colonel,  rather  impatiently,  because  his  voice  would 
tremble,  asked  as  Lydia  had  done : 

"  Have  you  seen  Esther?  " 

This  Jeff  found  unreasonably  irritating.  Bitter  as  the 
sight  of  her  had  been  and  unspeakable  her  repudiation,  he 
felt  to-day  as  if  they  did  not  pertain.  The  thing  that  did 
pertain  with  a  biting  force  was  to  remove  himself  before 
innocent  young  sisterly  girls  idealised  him  to  their  harm. 
But  he  answered,  and  not  too  ungraciously : 

"  Yes,  I've  seen  Esther.  But  that's  nothing  to  do  with 
it.  Esther  is  —  what  she's  always  been.  Only  I've  got 
to  get  away." 

The  colonel,  from  long  brooding  over  him,  had  a  pa 
tience  comparable  only  to  a  mother's.  He  was  bitterly 
hurt.  He  could  not  understand.  But  he  could  at  least 
attain  the  only  grace  possible  and  pretend  to  understand. 
So  he  answered  with  a  perfect  gentleness: 

"  I  see,  Jeff,  I  see.  But  I  wish  you  could  find  it  possible 
to  put  it  off  —  till  the  end  of  the  week,  say." 

"  Very  well,"  said  Jeff,  in  a  curt  concession,  "  the  end 
of  this  week." 

He  got  up  and  went  out  of  the  room  and  the  house,  and 
the  colonel,  turning  to  look,  saw  him  striding  down  the 
slope  to  the  river.  Then  the  elder  man's  hands  began  to 
tremble,  and  he  sat  pathetically  subject  to  the  seizure. 
Anne,  if  she  had  found  him,  would  have  known  the  name  of 
the  thing  that  had  settled  upon  him.  She  would  have 
called  it  a  nervous  chill.  But  to  him  it  was  one  of  the  lit 
tle  ways  of  his  predestined  mate,  old  age.  And  presently, 
sitting  there  ignominiously  shuddering,  he  began  to  be 
amused  at  himself,  for  he  had  a  pretty  sense  of  humour, 
and  to  understand  himself  better  than  he  had  before. 
Face  to  face  with  this  ironic  weakness,  he  saw  beyond  the 


THE  PRISONER  141 

physiologic  aspect  of  it,  the  more  deeply  into  his  soul. 
The  colonel  had  been  perfectly  sure  that  he  had  taken  ex 
quisite  care  of  himself,  these  last  years,  because  he  desired 
to  see  his  son  again,  and  also  because  Jeff,  while  suffering 
penalty,  must  be  spared  the  pain  of  bereavement.  So  he 
had  formed  a  habit,  and  now  it  was  his  master.  He  had 
learned  self-preservation,  but  at  what  a  cost!  Where 
were  the  sharp  sweet  pangs  of  life  that  had  been  used  to 
assail  him  before  he  anchored  in  this  calm  ?  Daring  was  a 
lost  word  to  him.  Was  it  true  he  was  to  have  no  more 
stormy  risings  of  hot  life,  no  more  passions  of  just  rage 
or  even  righteous  hate,  because  he  had  taught  himself  to 
rule  his  blood?  Now  when  his  heart  ached  in  anticipatory 
warning  over  his  son's  going,  why  must  he  think  of  ways 
to  be  calm,  as  if  being  calm  were  the  aim  of  man?  Labo 
riously  he  had  learned  how  not  to  waste  himself,  and  the 
negation  of  life  which  is  old  age  and  then  death  had  fallen 
upon  him.  He  laughed  a  little,  bitterly,  and  Anne,  com 
ing  to  find  him  as  she  did  from  time  to  time,  to  make  sure 
he  was  comfortable,  smiled,  hearing  it,  and  asked: 

"What  is  it,  Farvie?  " 

He  looked  up  into  her  kind  face  as  if  it  were  strange  to 
him.  At  that  moment  he  and  life  were  having  it  out  to 
gether.  Even  womanly  sweetness  could  not  come  between. 

"  Anne,"  said  he,  "  I'm  an  old  man." 

"  Oh,  no,  Farvie ! "  She  was  smoothing  his  shoulder 
with  her  slender  hand.  "  No  !  " 

But  even  she  could  not  deny  it.  To  her  youth,  he  knew, 
he  must  seem  old.  Yet  her  service,  her  fostering  love,  had 
only  made  him  older.  She  had  copied  his  own  attitude. 
She  had  helped  him  not  to  die,  and  yet  to  sink  into  the 
ambling  pace  of  these  defended  years. 

"  Damn   it,  Anne ! "   he   said,  with  suddenly   frowning 


142  THE  PRISONER 

brow,  and  now  she  started.  She  had  never  heard  an  out 
break  from  courtly  Farvie.  "  I  wish  I'd  been  more  of  a 
man." 

She  did  not  understand  him,  and  her  eyes  questioned 
whether  he  was  ill.  He  read  the  query.  That  was  it,  he 
thought  impotently.  They  had  all  three  of  them  been 
possessed  by  that,  the  fear  that  he  was  going  to  be  ill. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  I  wish  I'd  been  more  of  a  man.  I 
should  be  more  of  a  man  now." 

She  slipped  away  out  of  the  room.  He  thought  he  had 
frightened  her.  But  in  a  moment  she  was  back  with  some 
whiskey,  hot,  in  a  glass.  The  colonel  wanted  to  order  her 
off  and  swear  his  nerves  would  be  as  taut  without  it.  But 
how  could  he?  There  was  the  same  traitorous  trembling 
in  his  legs,  and  he  put  out  his  hand  and  took  the  glass,  and 
thanked  her.  The  thanks  sounded  like  the  courteous, 
kind  father  she  knew;  but  when  she  had  carried  the  glass 
into  the  kitchen  she  stood  a  moment,  her  hand  on  the  table, 
and  thought,  the  lines  of  trouble  on  her  forehead:  what 
had  been  the  matter  with  him? 

Jeff,  when  he  got  out  of  the  house,  walked  in  a  savage 
hurry  down  to  the  end  of  the  lot,  and  there,  feeling  no 
more  at  ease  with  himself,  skirted  along  the  bank  bor 
dered  by  inlets  filled  with  weedy  loveliness,  and  came  to 
the  lower  end  of  the  town  where  the  cotton  mills  were. 
He  glanced  up  at  them  as  he  struck  into  the  street  past 
their  office  entrance,  and  wondered  what  the  stock  was 
quoted  at  now,  and  whether  an  influx  of  foreigners  had 
displaced  the  old  workmen.  It  had  looked  likely  before  he 
went  away.  But  he  had  no  interest  in  it.  He  had  no  in 
terest  in  Addington,  he  thought:  only  in  the  sad  case  of 
Lydia  thrown  up  against  the  tumultuous  horde  of  his  re 
leased  emotions  and  hurt  by  them  and  charmed  by  them 
and,  his  remorseful  judgment  told  him,  insulted  by  them. 


THE  PRISONER  143 

He  could  not,  even  that  morning,  have  told  how  he  felt 
about  Lydia,  or  whether  he  had  any  feeling  at  all,  save  a 
proper  gratitude  for  her  tenderness  to  his  father.  But 
he  had  found  her  in  his  path,  when  his  hurt  soul  was  cry 
ing  out  to  all  fostering  womanhood  to  save  him  from  the 
ravening  claw  of  wroman's  cruelty.  She  had  felt  his  need, 
and  they  had  looked  at  each  other  with  eyes  that  pierced 
defences.  And  then,  incarnate  sympathy,  tender  youth, 
she  had  rested  in  his  arms,  and  in  the  generosity  of  her 
giving  and  the  exquisiteness  of  the  gift,  he  had  been  swept 
into  that  current  where  there  is  no  staying  except  by  an 
anguish  of  denial.  It  was  chaos  within  him.  He  did  not 
think  of  his  allegiance  to  Esther,  nor  was  he  passionately 
desirous,  with  his  whole  mind,  of  love  for  this  new  Lydia. 
He  was  in  a  whirl  of  emotion,  and  hated  life  where  you 
could  never  really  right  yourself,  once  you  were  wrong. 

He  kept  on  outside  the  town,  and  presently  walked  with 
exhilaration  because  nobody  knew  him  and  he  was  free, 
and  the  day  was  of  an  exquisite  beauty,  the  topmost  flower 
of  the  waxing  spring.  The  road  was  marked  by  elms, 
aisled  and  vaulted,  and  birds  called  enchantingly.  He  was 
able  to  lay  aside  cool  knowledge  of  the  fight  whereby  all 
things  live  and,  such  was  the  desire  of  his  mind,  to  partake 
of  pleasure,  to  regard  them  as  poets  do  and  children  and 
pitiful  women:  the  birds  as  lumps  of  free  delight,  winged 
particles  of  joy.  The  song-birds  were  keen  participants 
of  sport,  killing  to  eat,  and  bigger  birds  were  killing  them. 
But  because  they  sang  and  their  feathers  were  newly 
painted,  he  let  himself  ignore  that  open  scandal  and  loved 
them  for  an  angel  choir. 

Coming  to  another  village,  though  he  knew  it  perfectly 
he  assumed  it  was  undiscovered  land,  and  beyond  it  lay  in 
a  field  and  dozed,  his  hat  over  his  eyes,  and  learned  how 
blessed  it  is  to  be  alone  in  free'dom,  even  afar  from  Lydias 


144  THE  PRISONER 

and  Esthers.  Healing  had  not  begun  in  him  until  that 
day.  Here  were  none  to  sympathise,  none  to  summon 
him  to  new  relations  or  recall  the  old.  The  earth  had 
taken  him  back  to  her  bosom,  to  cherish  gravely,  if  with  no 
actual  tenderness,  that  he  might  be  of  the  more  use  to  her. 
If  he  did  not  that  afternoon  hear  the  grass  growing,  at 
least  something  rose  from  the  mould  that  nourished  it,  into 
his  eyes  and  ears  and  mouth  and  the  pores  of  his  skin,  and 
helped  him  on  to  health.  At  five  he  remembered  his 
father,  who  had  begged  him  not  to  go  away,  got  up  and 
turned  back  on  his  steps.  Now  he  was  hungry  and  bought 
rolls  and  cheese  at  a  little  shop,  and  walked  on  eating 
them.  The  dusk  came,  and  only  the  robin  seemed  of  un 
abated  spirit,  flying  to  topmost  twigs,  and  giving  the  even 
ing  call,  the  cry  that  was,  he  thought,  "  grief !  grief ! " 
and  the  following  notes  like  a  sob. 

Jeffrey  came  into  Addington  by  another  road,  one  that 
would  take  him  into  town  along  the  upland,  and  now  he 
lingered  purposely  and  chose  indirect  ways  because,  al 
though  it  was  unlikely  that  any  one  would  know  him,  he 
shrank  from  the  prospect  of  demanding  eyes.  At  nine 
o'clock  even  he  was  no  farther  than  the  old  circus  ground, 
and,  nearing  it,  he  heard,  through  the  evening  stillness,  a 
voice,  loud,  sharp,  forensic.  It  was  hauntingly  familiar  to 
him,  a  voice  he  might  not  know  at  the  moment,  yet  one  that 
had  at  least  belonged  to  some  part  of  his  Addington  life. 
The  response  it  brought  from  him,  in  assaulted  nerves  and 
repugnant  ears,  was  entirely  distasteful.  Whatever  the 
voice  was,  he  had  at  some  time  hated  it.  Why  it  was  con 
tinuing  on  that  lifted  note  he  could  not  guess.  With  a 
little  twitch  of  the  lips,  the  sign  of  a  grim  amusement,  he 
thought  this  might  even  be  an  orator,  some  wardroom 
Demosthenes,  practising  against  the  lonely  curtain  of  the 
night. 


THE  PRISONER  145 

"  You  have  no  country,"  the  voice  was  bastinadoing 
the  air.  "  And  you  don't  need  one.  Your  country  is  the 
whole  earth  and  it  belongs  to  you." 

Jeff  halted  a  rod  before  the  nearer  entrance  to  the  field. 
He  had  suddenly  the  sense  of  presences.  The  nerves  on 
his  skin  told  him  humanity  was  near.  He  went  on,  with 
an  uncalculated  noiselessness,  for  the  moment  loomed  im 
portant,  and  since  what  humanity  was  there  was  silent  — 
all  but  that  one  hateful  voice  —  he,  approaching  in  ig 
norance,  must  be  still.  The  voice,  in  its  strident  passion, 
rose  again. 

"  The  country  for  a  man  to  serve  is  the  country  that 
serves  him.  The  country  that  serves  him  is  the  one  with 
out  a  king.  Has  this  country  a  king?  It  has  a  thousand 
kings  and  a  million  more  that  want  to  be.  How  many 
kings  do  you  want  to  reign  over  you  ?  How  many  are  you 
going  to  accept?  It  is  in  your  hands." 

It  ceased,  and  another  voice,  lower  but  full  of  a  sup 
pressed  passion,  took  up  the  tale,  though  in  a  foreign 
tongue.  Jeff  knew  the  first  one  now:  Weedon  Moore's. 
He  read  at  once  the  difference  between  Moore's  voice  and 
this  that  followed.  Moore's  had  been  imploring  in  its  as- 
sertiveness,  the  desire  to  convince.  The  other,  in  the 
strange  language,  carried  belief  and  sorrow  even.  It 
also  longed  to  convince,  but  out  of  an  inner  passion  hot  as 
the  flame  of  love  or  grief.  The  moon,  riding  superbly, 
and  coming  that  minute  out  of  her  cloud,  unveiled  the  scene. 
An  automobile  had  halted  on  a  slight  elevation  and  in  it 
stood  Moore  and  a  taller  man  gesticulating  as  he  spoke. 
And  about  them,  like  a  pulsing  carpet  lifted  and  stirred 
by  a  breeze  of  feeling,  were  the  men  Jeff's  instinct  had 
smelled  out.  They  were  packed  into  a  mass.  And  they 
were  silent.  Weedon  Moore  began  again. 

"  Kill  out  this  superstition  of  a  country.     Kill  it  out,  I 


146  THE  PRISONER 

say.  Kill  out  this  idea  of  going  back  to  dead  men  for 
rules  to  live  by.  The  dead  are  dead.  Their  Bibles  and 
their  laws  are  dead.  There's  more  life  in  one  of  you  men 
that  has  tasted  it  through  living  and  suffering  and  being 
oppressed  than  there  is  in  any  ten  of  their  kings  and 
prophets.  They  are  dead,  I  tell  you.  We  are  alive.  It 
was  their  earth  while  they  lived  on  it.  It's  our  earth  to 
day." 

Jeff  was  edging  nearer,  skirting  the  high  fence,  and 
while  he  did  it,  the  warm  voice  of  the  other  man  took  up 
the  exposition,  and  now  Jeff  understood  that  he  was 
Moore's  interpreter.  By  the  time  he  had  finished,  Jeff 
was  at  the  thin  edge  of  the  crowd  behind  the  car,  and 
though  one  or  two  men  turned  as  he  moved  and  glanced  at 
him,  he  seemed  to  rouse  no  uneasiness.  Here,  nearer  them 
in  the  moonlight,  he  saw  what  they  were :  workmen,  foreign 
evidently,  with  bared  throats  and  loosely  worn  hair,  some, 
their  caps  pushed  back,  others  without  hats  at  all,  seeking, 
it  seemed,  coolness  in  this  too  warm  adjuration. 

"  Their  symbol,"  said  Moore,  "  is  the  flag.  They  carry 
it  into  foreign  lands.  Why?  For  what  they  call  re 
ligion  ?  No.  For  money  —  money  —  money.  When  the 
flag  waves  in  a  new  country,  blood  begins  to  flow,  the 
blood  of  the  industrial  slave.  Down  with  the  flag.  Our 
symbol  is  the  sword." 

The  voice  of  the  interpreter,  in  an  added  passion, 
throbbed  upon  the  climbing  period.  Moore  had  moved  him 
and,  forgetful  of  himself,  he  was  dramatically  ready  to 
pass  his  ardour  on.  Jeff  also  forgot  himself.  He  clove 
like  a  wedge  through  the  thin  line  before  him,  and  leaped 
on  the  running-board. 

"  You  fool,"  he  heard  himself  yelling  at  Moore,  who  in 
the  insecurity  of  his  tubbiness  was  jarred  and  almost  over 
turned,  "  you're  robbing  them  of  their  country.  You're 


THE  PRISONER  147 

taking  away  the  thing  that  keeps  them  from  falling  down 
on  all-fours  and  going  back  to  brute  beasts.  My  God, 
Moore,  you're  a  traitor !  You  ought  to  be  shot." 

He  had  surprised  them.  They  did  not  even  hustle  him, 
but  there  were  interrogatory  syllables  directed  to  the 
interpreter.  Moore  recovered  himself.  He  gave  a  sharp 
sound  of  distaste,  and  then,  assuming  his  civilised  habit, 
said  to  Jeff  in  a  voice  of  specious  courtesy,  yet,  Jeff  knew, 
a  voice  of  hate : 

"  These  are  mill  operatives,  Blake,  labourers.  They 
know  what  labour  is.  They  know  what  capitalists  are. 
Do  you  want  me  to  tell  'em  who  you  are?  " 

Who  you  are?  Jeff  knew  what  it  meant.  Did  he  want 
Moore  to  tell  them  that  he  was  a  capitalist  found  out  and 
punished? 

"  Tell  and  be  damned,"  he  said.  "  See  here !  "  He  was 
addressing  the  interpreter.  "  You  understand  English. 
Fair  play.  Do  you  take  me?  Fair  play  is  what  English 
men  and  American  men  work  for  and  fight  for.  It's  fair 
play  to  give  me  a  chance  to  speak,  and  for  you  to  tell 
these  poor  devils  what  I  say.  Will  you  ?  " 

The  man  nodded.  His  white  teeth  gleamed  in  the 
moonlight.  Jeff  fancied  his  eyes  gleamed,  too.  He  was 
a  swarthy  creature  and  round  his  neck  was  knotted  a  hand 
kerchief,  vivid  red.  Jeff,  with  a  movement  of  the  arm, 
crowded  Moore  aside.  Moore  submitted.  Used,  as  he 
was,  to  being  swept  out  of  the  way,  all  the  energies  that 
might  have  been  remonstrant  in  him  had  combined  in  a 
controlling  calm  to  serve  him  until  the  day  when  he  should 
be  no  longer  ousted.  Jeff  spoke,  and  threw  his  voice,  he 
hoped,  to  the  outskirts  of  the  crowd,  ingenuously  forget 
ting  it  was  not  lungs  he  wanted  but  a  bare  knowledge  of 
foreign  tongues. 

tk  This  man,"   said  he,  "  tells  you  you've  no  country. 


148  THE  PRISONER 

Don't  you  let  him  lie  to  you.  Here's  your  country  under 
your  feet.  If  you  can't  love  it  enough  to  die  for  it,  go 
back  to  your  own  country,  the  one  you  were  born  in,  and 
love  that,  for  God's  sake."  He  judged  he  had  said  enough 
to  be  carried  in  the  interpreter's  memory,  and  turned  upon 
him.  "  Go  on,"  said  he  imperatively.  "  Say  it." 

But  even  then  he  had  no  idea  what  the  man  would  do. 
The  atmosphere  about  them  was  not  thrilling  in  responsive 
sympathy.  Silence  had  waited  upon  Moore,  and  this, 
Jeff  could  not  help  feeling,  was  silence  of  a  different 
species.  But  the  interpreter  did,  slowly  and  cautiously,  it 
seemed,  convey  his  words.  At  least  Jeff  hoped  he  was  con 
veying  them.  When  his  voice  ceased,  Jeff  took  up  the 
thread. 

"  He  tells  you  you've  no  country.  He  says  your  coun 
try  is  the  world.  You're  not  big  enough  to  need  the 
whole  world  for  your  country.  I'm  not  big  enough. 
Only  a  few  of  them  are,  the  prophets  and  the  great  dead 
men  he  thinks  so  little  of.  Dig  up  a  tract  of  ground  and 
call  it  your  country  and  make  it  grow  and  bloom  and  have 
good  laws  —  why,  you  fools ! "  His  patience  broke. 
"  You  fools,  you're  being  done.  You're  being  led  away 
and  played  upon.  A  man's  country  isn't  the  spot  where 
he  can  get  the  best  money  to  put  into  his  belly.  His  coun 
try  is  his  country,  just  as  his  mother  is  his  mother.  He 
can  worship  the  Virgin  Mary,  but  he  loves  his  mother 
best." 

Whether  the  name  hit  them  like  blasphemy,  whether  the 
interpreter  caught  fire  from  it  or  Moore  gave  a  signal,  he 
could  not  tell.  But  suddenly  he  was  being  hustled.  He 
was  pulled  down  from  the  car  with  a  gentle  yet  relentless 
force,  was  conscious  that  he  was  being  removed  and  must 
submit.  There  were  sounds  now,  the  quick  syllables  of 
the  southern  races,  half  articulate  to  the  uninstructed  ear 


THE  PRISONER  149 

but  full  of  idiom  and  passion,  and  through  his  own  silent 
struggle  he  was  aware  that  the  interpreter  was  soothing, 
directing,  and  inexorably  guiding  the  assault.  They  took 
him,  a  resistless  posse  of  them,  beyond  the  gap,  and  the 
automobile  followed  slowly  and  passed  him  just  outside. 
It  halted,  and  Moore  addressed  him  hesitatingly : 

"  I  could  take  you  back  to  town." 

Moore  didn't  want  to  say  this,  but  he  remembered  Miss 
Amabel  and  the  two  charming  girls,  all  adoring  Jeff,  and 
his  ever-present  control  bade  him  be  civilised.  Jeff  did 
not  answer.  He  was  full  of  a  choking  rage  and  blind  de 
sire  for  them  to  get  their  hands  off  him.  Not  in  his  im 
prisonment  even  had  he  felt  such  debasement  under  con 
trol  as  when  these  lithe  creatures  hurried  him  along.  Yet 
he  knew  then  that  his  rage  was  not  against  them,  innocent 
servitors  of  a  higher  power.  It  was  against  the  mean 
dominance  of  Weedon  Moore. 

The  car  passed  swiftly  on  and  down  the  road  to  town. 

Then  the  men  left  him  as  suddenly  as  trained  dogs  whis 
tled  from  their  prey.  He  felt  as  if  he  had  been  merely 
detained,  gently  on  the  whole,  at  the  point  the  master  had 
designated,  and  looked  about  for  the  interpreter.  It 
seemed  to  him  if  he  could  have  speech  with  that  man  he 
could  tell  him  in  a  sentence  what  Weedon  Moore  was, 
and  charge  him  not  to  deliver  these  ignorant  creatures  of 
another  race  into  his  mucky  hands.  But  if  the  interpreter 
was  there  he  could  not  be  distinguished.  Jeff  called,  a 
word  or  two,  not  knowing  what  to  say,  and  no  one  an 
swered.  The  crowd  that  had  been  eagerly  intent  on  a 
common  purpose,  to  get  him  out  of  the  debating  place, 
split  into  groups.  Individuals  detached  themselves,  si 
lently  and  swiftly,  and  melted  away.-  Jeff  heard  their  foot 
steps  on  the  road,  and  now  the  voices  began,  quietly  but 
with  an  eager  emphasis.  He  was  left  alone  by  the  dark- 


150  THE  PRISONER 

ened  field,  for  even  the  moon,  as  if  she  joined  the  general 
verdict,  slipped  under  a  cloud. 

Jeff  stood  a  moment  nursing,  not  his  anger,  but  a  clear 
headed  certainty  that  something  must  be  done.  Some 
thing  always  had  to  be  done  to  block  Weedon  Moore.  It 
had  been  so  in  the  old  days  when  Moore  was  not  danger 
ous  :  only  dirty.  Now  he  was  debasing  the  ignorant  mind. 
He  was  a  demagogue.  The  old  never-formulated  love  for 
Addington  came  back  to  Jeff  in  a  rush,  not  recognised  as 
love  an  hour  ago,  only  the  careless  affection  of  usage,  but 
ready,  he  knew,  to  spring  into  something  warmer  when  her 
dear  old  bulwarks  were  assailed.  You  don't  usually  feel 
a  romantic  passion  for  your  mother.  You  allow  her  to 
feed  you  and  be  patronised  by  you  and  stand  aside  to  let 
victorious  youth  pass  on.  But  see  unworthy  hands  touch 
ing  her  worn  dress  —  the  hands  of  Weedon  Moore  1  —  and 
you  snatch  it  from  their  grasp. 

Jeff  still  stood  there  thinking.  This,  the  circus-ground 
was  where  he  and  the  other  boys  had  trysted  in  a  delirious 
ownership  of  every  possible  "  show ",  where  they  had 
met  the  East  and  gloated  on  nature's  poor  eccentrici 
ties.  Now  here  he  was,  a  man  suddenly  set  in  his  purpose 
to  deliver  the  old  town  from  Weedon  Moore.  They 
couldn't  suffer  it,  he  and  the  rest  of  the  street  of  solid 
mansions  dating  back  to  ancient  dignities.  These  for 
eign  children  who  had  come  to  work  for  them  should  not 
be  bred  in  disbelief  in  Addington  traditions  which  were  asj 
good  as  anything  America  had  to  offer.  Jeff  was  an  aris 
tocrat  from  skin  to  heart,  because  he  was  sensitive,  be 
cause  he  loved  beauty  and  he  didn't  want  the  other  man 
to  come  too  close;  he  didn't  like  tawdry  ways  to  press 
upon  him.  But  while  he  had  been  shut  into  the  seclusion 
of  his  own  thoughts,  these  past  years,  he  had  learned 
something.  He  had  strengthened  passions  that  hardly 


THE  PRISONER  151 

knew  they  were  alive  until  now  events  awoke  them.  One 
was  the  worship  of  law,  and  one  was  that  savage  desire  of 
getting  to  the  place  where  we  love  law  so  much  that  we 
welcome  punishment.  He  recalled  himself  from  this  dark 
journey  back  into  his  cell,  and  threw  up  his  head  to  the 
heavens  and  breathed  in  air.  It  was  the  air  of  freedom. 
Yet  it  was  only  the  freedom  of  the  body.  If  he  forgot 
now  the  beauty  of  that  austere  goddess,  the  law,  then  was 
he  more  a  prisoner  than  when  he  had  learned  her  face  in 
loneliness  and  pain.  He  walked  out  of  the  grounds  and 
along  the  silent  road,  advised  through  keen  memory,  by 
sounds  and  scents,  of  spots  he  had  always  known,  and 
went  into  the  town  and  home.  There  were  lights,  but  for 
all  the  sight  of  people  Addington  might  have  been  abed. 

He  opened  the  front  door  softly  and  out  of  the  library 
Anne  came  at  once  as  if  she  hud  been  awaiting  him. 

"  Oh,"  she  said,  in  a  quick  trouble  breaking  bounds, 
though  gently,  now  there  was  another  to  share  it,  "  I'm 
afraid  Farvie's  sick." 


XIV 

"  What  is  it?  "  said  he.     "  What's  the  matter?  " 

But  Anne,  after  a  second  glance  at  his  tired  face,  was 
all  concern  for  him. 

"  Have  you  had  something  to  eat  ?  "  she  asked. 

He  put  that  aside,  and  said  remindingly : 

"  What  is  it  about  father?  " 

Anne  stood  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs.  She  had  the  air 
of  defending  the  way,  lest  he  rush  up  before  he  was  in 
telligently  prepared. 

"  We  don't  know  what  it  is.  He  went  all  to  pieces.  It 
was  just  after  you  had  gone.  I  found  him  there,  shaking. 
He  just  said  to  me:  'I'll  go  to  bed.'  So  I  helped  him. 
That's  all  I  know." 

Jeff  felt  an  instant  and  annoyed  compunction.  He  had 
dashed  off,  to  the  tune  of  his  own  wild  mood,  and  left  his 
father  to  the  assaults  of  emotions  perhaps  as  overwhelm 
ing  and  with  no  young  strength  to  meet  them. 

"  I'll  go  up,"  said  he.     "  Did  you  call  a  doctor?  " 

"  No.     He  wouldn't  let  me." 

Jeff  ran  up  the  stairs  and  found  Lydia  in  a  chair  outside 
the  colonel's  door.  She  looked  pathetically  tired  and  anx 
ious.  And  so  young :  if  she  had  arranged  herself  artfully 
to  touch  the  sympathies  she  couldn't  have  done  it  to  more 
effect.  Her  round  arms  were  bare  to  the  elbow,  her  hands 
were  loosely  clasped,  and  she  was  sitting,  like  a  child,  with 
her  feet  drawn  up  under  her  on  the  rung  of  the  chair. 
She  looked  at  him  in  a  solemn  relief  but,  he  saw  with  a  re 
lief  of  his  own,  no  sensitiveness  to  his  presence  apart  from 

the  effect  it  might  have  on  her  father. 

152 


THE  PRISONER  153 

"  He's  asleep,"  she  said,  in  a  whisper.  "  I'm  sitting 
here  to  listen." 

Jeffry  nodded  at  her  in  a  bluff  way  designed  to  express 
his  certainty  that  everything  was  going  to  be  on  its  legs 
again  now  he  had  come  home.  For  the  first  time  he  felt 
like  the  man  in  the  house,  and  the  thin  tonic  braced  him. 
He  opened  the  door  of  his  father's  room  and  went  in. 
The  colonel's  voice  came  at  once : 

"That  you,  Jeff?" 

"  Yes,"  said  Jeff.  He  sat  down  by  the  bedside  in  the 
straight-backed  chair  that  had  evidently  been  comfortable 
enough  for  the  sisters'  anxious  waich.  "  What's  the  mat 
ter,  father?" 

The  colonel  moved  slightly  nearer  Khe  edge  of  the  bed. 
His  eyes  brightened,  Jeff  noted  by  the  light  of  the  shaded 
lamp.  He  was  glad  to  get  his  son  home  again. 

"  Jeff,"  said  he,  "  I've  been  lying  here  making  up  my 
mind  I'd  tell  you." 

Jeffrey  rose  and  closed  the  door  he  had  left  open  a 
crack  out  of  courtesy  to  the  little  watcher  there.  He  came 
back  to  the  bed,  not  with  a  creaking  caution,  but  like  a 
man  bringing  a  man's  rude  solace.  He  could  not  believe 
his  father  was  seriously  undone.  But,  whatever  was  the 
matter,  the  colonel  was  glad  to  talk.  Perhaps,  loyal  as  he 
was,  even  he  could  scarcely  estimate  his  own  desire  to  turn 
from  soft  indulgences  to  the  hard  contact  of  a  man's  in 
telligence. 

"  Jeff,"  said  he,  "  I'm  in  a  bad  place.  I've  met  the  last 
enemy." 

"  Oh,  no,  you  haven't,"  said  Jeff,  at  random.  "  The 
last  enemy  is  Death.  That's  what  they  say,  don't  they? 
Well,  you're  years  and  years  to  the  good.  Don't  you 
worry." 

"  Ah,  but  the  last  enemy  isn't  Death,"  said  the  colonel 


154  THE  PRISONER 

wisely.  "  Don't  you  think  it.  The  last  enemy  is  Fear. 
Death's  only  the  executioner.  Fear  delivers  you  over,  and 
then  Death  has  to  take  you,  whether  or  no.  But  Fear  is 
the  arch  enemy." 

Sane  as  he  looked  and  spoke,  this  was  rather  impalpa 
ble,  and  Jeffrey  began  to  doubt  his  own  fitness  to  deal 
with  psychologic  quibbles.  But  his  father  gave  short 
shrift  for  questioning. 

"  I'm  afraid,"  he  said  quite  simply. 

"What  are  you  afraid  of?  "  Jeff  felt  he  had  to  meet 
him  with  an  equal  candour. 

"  Everything." 

They  looked  at  each  other  a  moment  and  then  Jeff  es 
sayed  a  mild,  "  Oh,  come !  "  because  there  was  nothing 
more  to  the  point. 

"  I've  taken  care  of  myself,"  said  the  colonel,  with  more 
vigour,  "  till  I'm  punk.  I  can't  stand  a  knockdown 
blow.  I  couldn't  stand  your  going  away.  I  went  to 
bed." 

"  Is  my  going  a  knockdown  blow  ?  " 

There  was  something  pathetic  in  hearing  that,  but 
pleasurable,  too,  in  a  warm,  strange  way. 

"  Why,  yes,  of  course  it  is." 

"  Well,  then,"  said  Jeff,  "  don't  worry.     I  won't  go." 

"  Oh,  yes,  you  will,"  said  the  colonel  instantly,  "  or 
you'll  be  punk.  I'd  rather  go  with  you.  I  told  you  that. 
But  it  wouldn't  do.  I  should  begin  to  pull  on  you.  And 
you'd  mother  me  as  they  do,  these  dear  girls." 

"Yes,"  said  Jeffrey  thoughtfully.  "Yes.  They're 
dear  girls." 

"  There's  nothing  like  them,"  said  the  colonel.  "  There 
never  was  anything  like  their  mother."  Then  he  stopped, 
remembering  she  was  not  Jeff's  mother,  too.  But  Jeff 
knew  all  about  his  own  mother,  the  speed  and  shine  and 


THE  PRISONER  155 

bewildering  impulse  of  her,  and  how  she  was  adored. 
But  nobody  could  have  been  soothed  and  brooded  over  by 
her,  that  gallant  fiery  creature.  Whatever  she  might  have 
become  if  she  had  lived,  love  of  her  then  was  a  fight  and  a 
devotion,  flowers  and  stars  and  dreams.  "  And  it  isn't  a 
thing  for  me  to  take,  this  sort  of  attachment,  Jeff.  I 
ought  to  give  it.  They  ought  to  be  having  the  kind  of 
time  girls  like.  They  ought  not  to  be  coddling  an  old  man 
badly  hypped." 

Jeff  nodded  here,  comprehendingly.  Yes,  they  did  need 
the  things  girls  like :  money,  clothes,  fun.  But  he  vaulted 
away  from  that  disquieting  prospect,  and  faced  the  pres 
ent  need. 

"  Have  you  had  anything  to  eat?  " 

"  Oh,  yes,"  the  colonel  said.  "  Egg-nog.  Anne  makes 
it.  Very  good." 

"  See  here,"  said  Jeff,  "  don't  you  want  to  get  up  and 
slip  your  clothes  on,  and  I'll  forage  round  and  fish  out 
cold  hash  or  something,  and  we'll  have  a  kind  of  a  mild 
spree?" 

A  slow  smile  lighted  the  colonel's  face,  rather  grimly. 

He  admired  the  ease  with  which  Jeff  grasped  the  situa 
tion. 

"  Don't  you  start  them  out  cooking,"  he  advised. 

"  No,  I'll  find  a  ham-bone  or  something.  Only  slip  into 
your  trousers.  Get  your  shoes  on  your  feet.  We'll 
smoke  a  pipe  together." 

"  You're  right,"  said  the  colonel,  with  vigour.  "  We'll 
put  on  our  shoes." 

Jeff,  on  his  way  to  the  door,  heard  him  throwing  off  the 
bedclothes.  His  own  was  the  harder  part.  He  had  to 
meet  the  tired,  sweet  servitors  without  and  announce  a 
man's  fiat.  There  they  were,  Lydia  still  in  her  patient 
attitude,  and  Anne  on  the  landing,  her  head  thrown  back 


156  THE  PRISONER 

and  the  pure  outline  of  her  chin  and  throat  like  beauty 
carved  in  the  air.  At  the  opening  of  the  door  they  were 
awake  with  an  instant  alertness.  Lydia's  feet  came  noise 
lessly  to  the  floor,  and  Jeff  understood,  with  a  pang  of 
pity  for  her,  that  she  had  perched  uncomfortably  to 
keep  herself  awake.  This  soft  creature  would  never  un 
derstand.  He  addressed  himself  to  Anne,  who  believed  in 
the  impeccable  rights  of  man  and  could  take  uncompre- 
hended  ways  for  granted. 

"  He's  going  to  get  up." 

Anne  made  a  movement  toward  the  door. 

"  No,"  said  Jeffrey.  He  was  there  before  her,  and, 
though  he  smiled  at  her,  she  knew  she  was  not  to  pass. 
"  I'll  see  to  him.  You  two  run  off  to  bed." 

They  were  both  regarding  him  with  a  pale,  anxious  ques 
tioning.  But  Anne's  look  cleared. 

"  Come,  Lydia,"  said  she,  and  as  Lydia,  cramped  with 
sleep,  trudged  after  her,  she  added  wisely,  "  It'll  be  better 
for  them  both." 

When  they  were  gone,  Jeffrey  did  go  down  to  the 
kitchen,  rigid  in  the  order  Mary  Nellen  always  left.  He 
entered  boldly  on  a  campaign  of  ruthless  ravaging,  found 
bread  and  cheese  and  set  them  out,  and  a  roast  most  at 
tractive  to  the  eye.  He  lighted  candles,  and  then  a  lamp 
with  a  gay  piece  of  red  flannel  in  its  glass  body,  put  there 
by  Mary  Nellen,  who,  though  on  Homeric  knowledge  bent, 
kept  religiously  all  the  ritual  of  home.  The  colonel's 
slippered  step  was  coming  down  the  stairs.  Jeffrey  went 
out  into  the  hall  and  beckoned.  He  looked  stealth  and 
mischief,  and  the  colonel  grimaced  wisely  at  him.  They 
went  into  the  kitchen  and  sat  down  to  their  meal  like  crim 
inals.  The  colonel  had  to  eat,  in  vying  admiration  of  Jeff, 
ravenous  from  his  day's  walk.  When  they  drew  back,  Jeff 
pulled  out  his  pipe.  He  was  not  an  incessant  smoker,  but 


THE  PRISONER  157 

in  this  first  interval  of  his  homecoming  all  small  indul 
gences  were  sweet.  He  paused  in  filling,  finger  on  the 
weed. 

"  Where's  yours  ?  "  he  asked. 

The  colonel  shook  his  head. 

"  Don't  smoke  ?  "  Jeff  inquired. 

"  I  haven't  for  a  year  or  so."  He  was  shamefaced  over 
it.  "  The  fact  is  —  Jeff,  I'm  nothing  but  a  malingerer. 
I  thought  —  my  heart  — " 

"  Very  wise,"  said  Jeffrey,  his  eyes  half-closed  in  a  luxu 
rious  lighting  up.  "  Very  wise  indeed.  But  just  to 
night  —  don't  you  think  you'd  better  have  a  whiff  to 
night  ?  "  The  colonel  shook  his  head,  but  Jeff  sent  out  an 
advance  signal  of  blue  smoke.  "  Where  is  it?  "  said  he. 

"  Oh,  I  suppose  it's  in  my  bureau  drawer,"  said  the  colo 
nel,  with  impatience.  "  Left  hand.  I  kept  it ;  I  don't 
know  why." 

"  Yes,"  said  Jeffrey.     "  Of  course  you  kept  your  pipe." 

He  ran  softly  upstairs,  opening  and  shutting  doors  with 
an  admirable  quiet,  and  put  his  hand  on  the  old  briarwood. 
From  Anne's  room  he  heard  a  low  crooning.  She  was 
awake  then,  but  with  mind  at  ease  or  she  wouldn't  sing 
like  that.  He  could  imagine  how  Lydia  had  dropped  off 
to  sleep,  like  a  burden  of  sweet  fragrances  cast  on  the 
bosom  of  the  night,  an  unfinished  prayer  babbled  on  her 
lips.  But  to  think  of  Lydia  now  was  to  look  trouble  in 
the  face,  and  he  returned  to  his  father  not  so  thoroughly 
in  the  spirit  of  a  specious  gaiety.  It  did  him  good, 
though,  to  see  the  colonel's  fingers  close  on  the  old  pipe, 
with  a  motion  of  the  thumb,  indicating  a  resumed  habit, 
caressing  a  smooth,  warm  boss.  The  colonel  soberly  but 
luxuriously  lighted  up,  and  they  sat  and  puffed  a  while  in 
silence.  Jeffrey  drew  up  a  chair  for  his  father's  feet  and 
another  for  his  own. 


158  THE  PRISONER 

"  What's  your  idea,"  he  said/  at  length,  "  of  Weedorr 
Moore?  " 

The  colonel  took  his  pipe  out  and  replaced  it. 

"  Rather  a  dirty  fellow,  wasn't  he?  " 

"  Yes.     That  is,  in  college." 

"  What  d'  he  do?" 

The  colonel  had  never  been  told  at  the  time.  He  knew 
Moore  was  an  outcast  from  the  gang. 

"  Everything,"  said  Jeffrey  briefly.  "  And  told  of  it," 
he  added. 

The  colonel  nodded.  Jeffrey  put  Moore  aside  for  later 
consideration,  and  made  up  his  mind  pretty  generously  to 
talk  things  over.  The  habit  of  his  later  years  had  been 
all  for  silence,  and  the  remembered  confidences  of  the  time 
before  had  involved  Esther.  Of  that  sweet  sorcery  he 
would  not  think.  As  he  stood  now,  the  immediate  result 
of  his  disaster  had  been  to  callous  surfaces  accessible  to 
human  intercourse  and  at  the  same  time  cause  him,  in  the 
sensitive  inner  case  of  him,  to  thank  the  ruling  powers  that 
he  need  never  again,  seeing  how  ravaging  it  is,  give  himself 
away.  But  now  because  his  father  had  got  to  have  new 
wine  poured  into  him,  he  was  giving  himself  away,  just  as, 
on  passionate  impulse,  he  had  given  himself  away  to  Lydia. 
He  put  his  question  desperately,  knowing  how  inexorably 
it  committed  him. 

"  Do  you  suppose  there's  anything  in  this  town  for  me 
to  do?" 

The  colonel  produced  at  once  the  possibility  he  had  been 
privately  cherishing. 

"  Alston  Choate  — " 

"I  know,"  said  Jeffrey.  "I  sha'n't  go  to  Choate. 
You  know  what  Addington  is.  Before  I  knew  it,  I  should 
be  a  cause.  Can't  you  and  I  hatch  up  something?  " 

The  colonel  hesitated. 


THE  PRISONER  159 

"  It  would  be  simple  enough,"  he  said,  "  if  I  had  any 
capital." 

"  You  haven't,"  said  Jeff,  rather  curtly,  "  for  me  to 
fool  away.  What  you've  got  you  must  save  for  the  girls." 

The  same  doubt  was  in  both  their  minds.  Would  Add- 
ington  let  him  earn  his  living  in  the  bald  give  and  take  of 
everyday  commerce?  Would  it  half  patronise  and  half 
distrust  him?  He  thought,  from  old  knowledge  of  it,  that 
Addington  would  behave  perfectly  but  exasperatingly.  It 
was  passionate  in  its  integrity,  but  because  he  was  born 
out  of  the  best  traditions  in  it,  a  temporary  disgrace  would 
be  condoned.  If  he  opened  a  shop,  Addington  would  give 
him  a  tithe  of  its  trade,  from  duty  and,  as  it  would  as 
suredly  tell  itself,  for  the  sake  of  his  father.  But  he  didn't 
want  that  kind  of  nursing.  He  was  sick  enough  at  the 
accepted  ways  of  life  to  long  for  wildernesses,  ocean  voy 
ages  on  rough  liners,  where  every  man  is  worked  hard 
enough  to  let  his  messmate  alone.  He  was  hurt,  irremedi 
ably  hurt,  he  knew,  in  what  stands  in  us  for  the  affections. 
But  here  were  affections  still,  inflexibly  waiting.  They 
had  to  be  reckoned  with.  They  had  to  be  nurtured  and 
upheld,  no  matter  how  the  contacts  of  life  hit  his  own  skin. 
He  tried  vaguely,  and  still  with  angry  difficulty,  to  explain 
himself. 

"  I  want  to,  stand  by  you,  father.  But  you  won't  get 
much  satisfaction  out  of  me." 

The  colonel  thought  he  should  get  all  kinds  of  satisfac 
tion.  His  glance  told  that.  How  much  of  the  content 
ment  of  it,  Jeffrey  wondered,  with  a  cynical  indulgence  for 
life  as  it  is,  came  from  tobacco  and  how  much  from  him? 

"  You  see  I'm  not  the  chap  I  was,"  he  blundered,  trying 
to  open  his  father's  eyes  to  the  abysmal  depth  of  his  futil- 
ity. 

"You're  older,"  said  the  colonel.     "And  — you'll  let 


160  THE  PRISONER 

me  say  it,  won't  you,  Jeff?"  He  felt  very  timid  before 
his  rough-tongued,  perhaps  coarsened  son.  "  You  seem  to 
me  to  have  got  a  lot  out  of  it." 

Out  of  his  imprisonment !  The  red  mounted  to  Jef 
frey's  forehead.  He  took  out  his  pipe,  emptied  it  care 
fully  and  laid  it  down. 

"  Father,"  he  said  slowly,  "  I'm  going  to  tell  you  the 
truth.  When  we're  young  we're  full  of  yeast.  We  know 
it  all.  We  think  we're  going  to  do  it  all.  But  we're  only 
seething  and  working  inside.  It's  a  dream,  I  suppose. 
We  live  in  it  and  we  think  we've  got  it  all.  But  it's  a  hor 
ribly  uncomfortable  dream." 

The  colonel  gave  his  little  acquiescing  nod. 

"  I  wouldn't  have  it  again,"  he  said.  "  No,  I  wouldn't 
go  back." 

"  And  I  give  you  my  word,"  said  Jeffrey,  slowly  think 
ing  out  his  way,  though  it  looked  to  him  as  if  there  were 
really  no  way,  "  I'm  as  much  at  sea  as  I  was  then.  It's 
not  the  same  turmoil,  but  it's  a  turmoil.  I  was  pulled  up 
short.  I  was  given  plenty  of  time  to  think.  Well,  I 
thought  —  when  I  hadn't  the  nerve  to  keep  myself  from 
doing  it." 

"  You  said  some  astonishing  things  in  the  prison  pa 
per,"  his  father  ventured.  The  whole  thing  seemed  so 
gravely  admirable  to  him  —  Jeff  and  the  prison  as  the 
public  knew  them  —  that  he  wished  Jeff  himself  could  get 
comfort  out  of  it. 

"  Some  few  things  I  believe  I  settled,  so  far  as  I  under 
stand  them."  Jeff  was  frowning  at  the  table  where  his 
hand  beat  an  impatient  measure.  "  I  saw  things  in  the 
large.  I  saw  how  the  nations  —  all  of  'em,  in  living  under 
present  conditions  —  could  go  to  hell  quickest.  That's 
what  they're  bent  on  doing.  And  I  saw  how  they  could 
call  a  halt  if  they  would.  But  how  to  start  in  on  my  own 


THE  PRISONER  161 

life,  I  don't  know.  You'd  think  I'd  had  time  enough  to 
face  the  thing  and  lick  it  into  shape.  I  haven't.  I  don't 
know  any  more  what  to  do  than  if  I'd  been  born  yesterday 
—  on  a  new  planet  —  and  not  such  an  easy  one." 

While  the  colonel  had  bewailed  his  own  limitations  a 
querulous  discontent  had  ivoried  his  face.  Now  it  had 
cleared  and  left  the  face  sedate  and  firm  in  a  gravity  fitted 
to  its  nobility  of  line. 

"  Jeff,"  he  said.  He  leaned  over  the  table  and  touched 
Jeffrey's  hand. 

Jeff  looked  up. 

"What  is  it?  "he  asked. 

"  The  reason  you're  not  prepared  to  go  on  is  because 
you  don't  care.  You  don't  care  a  hang  about  yourself." 

Jeffrey  debated  a  moment.  It  was  true.  His  trouble 
some  self  did  not  seem  to  him  of  any  least  account. 

"  Well,"  said  he,  «  let's  go  to  bed." 

But  they  shook  hands  before  they  parted,  and  the  colo 
nel  did  not  put  his  pipe  away  in  the  drawer.  He  left  it 
on  the  mantel,  conveniently  at  hand. 


XV 

Next  morning  Anne,  after  listening  at  the  colonel's  door 
and  hearing  nothing,  decided  not  to  tap.  She  went  on 
downstairs  to  be  saluted  by  a  sound  she  delighted  in :  a  low 
humming.  It  came  from  the  library  where  her  father  was 
happily  and  most  villainously  attacking  the  only  song  he 
knew :  "  Lord  Lovell."  Anne's  heart  cleared  up  like  a  smil 
ing  sky.  She  went  in  to  him,  and  he,  at  the  window,  his 
continued  humming  like  the  spinning  of  a  particularly  ec 
centric  top,  turned  and  greeted  her,  and  he  seemed  to  be 
very  well  and  almost  gay.  He  showed  no  sign  of  even 
remembering  yesterday,  and  when  presently  Jeffrey  came 
in  and  then  Lydia,  they  all  behaved,  Anne  thought,  like  an 
ordinary  family  with  no  queer  problems  round  the  corner. 

After  breakfast  Jeffrey  turned  to  Lydia  and  said  quite 
simply :  "  Come  into  the  orchard  and  walk  a  little." 

But  to  Lydia,  Anne  saw,  with  a  mild  surprise,  his  asking 
must  have  meant  something  not  so  simple.  Her  face 
flushed  all  over,  and  a  misty  sweetness,  like  humility  and 
gratitude,  came  into  her  eyes.  Jeffrey,  too,  caught  that 
morning  glow,  only  to  find  his  task  the  sadder.  How  to 
say  things  to  her!  and  after  all,  what  was  it  possible  to 
say?  They  went  down  into  the  orchard,  and  Lydia,  by 
his  side,  paced  demurely.  He  saw  she  was  trying  to  fit 
her  steps  to  his  impatient  stride,  and  shortened  up  on  it. 
He  felt  very  tender  toward  Lydia.  At  last,  when  it  seemed 
as  if  they  might  be  out  of  range  of  the  windows,  and,  he 
unreasonably  felt,  more  free,  he  broke  out  abruptly : 

162 


THE  PRISONER  163 

"  I've  got  a  lot  of  things  to  say  to  you."  Lydia  glanced 
up  at  him  with  that  wonderful,  exasperating  look,  half 
humility,  and  waited.  It  seemed  to  her  he  must  have  a 
great  deal  to  say.  "  I  don't  believe  it's  possible  for  you  - 
for  a  girl  —  to  understand  what  it  would  be  for  a  man  in 
my  place  to  come  home  and  find  everybody  so  sweet  and 
kind.  I  mean  you  —  and  Anne." 

Now  he  felt  nothing  short  of  shame.  But  she  took  him < 
quickly  enough.  He  didn't  have  to  go  far  along  the 
shameful  road.  She  glanced  round  at  him  again,  and, 
knowing  what  the  look  must  be,  he  did  not  meet  it.  He 
could  fancy  well  the  hurt  inquiry  leaping  into  those  inno 
cent  eyes. 

"  What  have  I  done,"  she  asked,  and  his  mind  supplied 
the  accusatory  inference,  "  that  you  don't  love  me  any 
more?  " 

He  hastened  to  answer. 

"  You've  been  everything  that's  sweet  and  kind."  He 
added,  whether  wisely  or  not  he  could  not  tell,  what  seemed 
to  him  the  truth :  "  I  haven't  got  hold  of  myself.  I 
thought  it  would  be  an  easy  stunt  to  come  back  and  stay 
a  while  and  then  go  away  and  get  into  something  perma 
nent.  But  it's  no  such  thing.  Lydia,  I  don't  understand 
people  very  well.  I  don't  understand  myself.  I'm  afraid 
I'm  a  kind  of  blackguard." 

"  Oh,  no,"  said  Lydia  gravely.     "  You're  not  that." 

She  did  not  understand  him,  but  she  was,  in  her  beauti 
ful  confidence,  sure  he  was  right.  She  was  hurt.  There 
was  the  wound  in  her  heart,  and  that  new  sensation  of 
its  actually  bleeding;  but  she  had  a  fine  courge  of  her 
own,  and  she  knew  grief  over  that  inexplicable  pang 
must  be  put  away  until  the  sight  of  it  could  not  trouble 
him. 

"  I'm  going  to  ask  you  a  question,"  said  Jeffrey  shortly, 


164  THE  PRISONER 

in  his  distaste  for  asking  it  at  all.  "  Do  you  want  me  to 
take  father  away  with  me,  you  and  Anne?  " 

"  Are  you  going  away  ?  "  she  asked,  in  an  irrepressible 
tremor. 

"  Answer  me,"  said  Jeffrey. 

She  was  not  merely  the  beautiful  child  he  had  thought 
her.  There  was  something  dauntless  in  her,  something 
that  could  endure.  He  felt  for  her  a  quick  passion  of 
comradeship  and  the  worship  men  have  for  women  who 
seem  to  them  entirely  beautiful  and  precious  enough  to  be 
saved  from  disillusion. 

"  If  I  took  him  away  with  me  —  and  of  course  it  would 
be  made  possible,"  he  was  blundering  over  this  in  decency 
— "  possible  for  you  to  live  in  comfort  —  wouldn't  you 
and  Anne  like  to  have  some  life  of  your  own?  You 
haven't  had  any.  Like  other  girls,  I  mean." 

She  threw  her  own  question  back  to  him  with  a  cool  and 
clear  decision  he  hadn't  known  the  soft,  childish  creature 
had  it  in  her  to  frame. 

"  Does  he  want  us  to  go?  " 

"  Good  God,  no !  "  said  Jeffrey,  faced,  in  the  instant,  by 
the  hideous  image  of  ingratitude  she  conjured  up,  his  own 
as  well  as  his  father's. 

"Do  you?" 

"  Lydia,"  said  he,  "  you  don't  understand.  I  told  you 
you  couldn't.  It's  only  that  my  sentence  wasn't  over 
when  I  left  prison.  It's  got  to  last,  because  I  was  in 
prison." 

"  Oh,  no  !  no  !  "  she  cried. 

"  I've  muddled  my  life  from  the  beginning.  I  was  al 
ways  told  I  could  do  things  other  fellows  couldn't.  Be 
cause  I  was  brilliant.  Because  I  knew  when  to  strike. 
Because  I  wasn't  afraid.  Well,  it  wasn't  so.  I  muddled 
the  whole  thing.  And  the  consequence  is,  I've  got  to  keep 


THE  PRISONER  165 

on  being  muddled.  It's  as  if  you  began  a  chemical  experi 
ment  wrong.  You  might  go  on  messing  with  it  to  infin 
ity.  You  wouldn't  come  out  anywhere." 

"  You  think  it's  going  to  be  too  hard  for  us,"  she  said, 
with  a  directness  he  thought  splendid. 

"  Yes.  It  would  be  infernally  hard.  And  what  are  you 
going  to  get  out  of  it  ?  Go  away,  Lydia.  Live  your  life, 
you  and  Anne,  and  marry  decent  men  and  let  me  fight  it 
out." 

"  I  sha'n't  marry,"  said  Lydia.     "  You  know  that." 

He  could  have  groaned  at  her  beautiful  wild  loyalty. 
The  power  of  the  universe  had  thrown  them  together,  and 
she  was  letting  that  one  minute  seal  her  unending  devotion. 
But  her  staunchness  made  it  easier  to  talk  to  her.  She 
could  stand  a  good  deal,  the  wind  and  rain  of  cruel  fact. 
She  wouldn't  break. 

"  Lydia,"  said  he,  "  you  are  beautiful  to  me.  But  I 
can't  let  you  go  on  seeming  beautiful,  if  —  if  you're  so 
divinely  kind  to  me  and  believing,  and  everything  that's 
foolish  —  and  dear." 

"  You  mean,"  said  Lydia,  "  you're  afraid  I  should  think 
wrong  thoughts  about  you  —  because  there's  Esther. 
Oh,  I  know  there's  Esther.  But  I  didn't  mean  to  be 
wicked.  And  you  didn't.  It  was  so  —  so  above  things. 
So  above  everything." 

Her  voice  trembled  too  much  for  her  to  manage  it.  He 
glanced  at  her  and  saw  her  lip  was  twitching  violently, 
and  savagely  thought  a  man  sometime  would  have  a  right 
to  kiss  it.  And  yet  what  did  he  care  ?  To  kiss  a  woman's 
lips  was  a  madness  or  a  splendour  that  passed.  He  knew 
there  might  be,  almost  incredibly,  another  undying  pas 
sion  that  did  last,  made  up  of  endurance  and  loyalty  and 
the  free  rough  fellowship  between  men.  This  girl,  this  soft 
yet  unyielding  thing,  was  capable  of  that.  But  she  must 


166  THE  PRISONER 

not  squander  it  on  him  who  was  bankrupt.  Yet  here  she 
was,  in  her  house  of  dreams,  tended  by  divine  ministrants 
of  the  ideal:  the  old  lying  servitors  that  let  us  believe  life 
is  what  we  make  it  and  deaf  to  the  creatures  raging  there 
outside  who  swear  it  is  made  irrevocably  for  us.  He  was 
sure  they  lied,  these  servitors  in  the  house  of  maiden 
dreams.  Yet  how  to  tell  her  so !  And  would  he  do  it  if 
he  could? 

"  Ycu  see,"  he  said  irrelevantly,  "  I  want  you  to  have 
your  life." 

"  It  will  be  my  life,"  she  said.  "  To  take  care  of  Far- 
vie,  as  we  always  have.  To  make  things  nice  for  you  in 
the  house.  I  don't  believe  you  and  Farvie'd  like  it  at  all 
without  Anne  and  me." 

She  was  announcing,  he  saw,  quite  plainly,  that  she 
didn't  want  a  romantic  pact  with  him.  They  had  met, 
just  once,  for  an  instant,  in  the  meeting  of  their  lips, 
and  Lydia  had  simply  taken  that  shred  of  triumphant  life 
up  to  the  mountain-top  to  weave  her  nest  of  it:  a  nest 
where  she  was  to  warm  all  sorts  of  brooding  wonders  for 
him  and  for  her  father.  There  was  nothing  to  be  done 
with  her  in  her  innocence,  her  ignorance,  her  beauty  of 
devotion. 

"  It  doesn't  make  any  difference  about  me,"  he  said. 
"  I'm  out  of  the  running  in  every  possible  way.  But  it 
makes  a  lot  of  difference  about  you  and  Anne." 

"  It  doesn't  make  any  difference  to  Anne,"  said  Lydia 
astutely,  "  because  she's  going  to  heaven,  and  so  she 
doesn't  care  about  what  she  has  here." 

He  was  most  amusedly  anxious  to  know  whether  Lydia 
also  was  going  to  heaven. 

"  Do  you  care  what  happens  to  you  here?  "  he  asked. 

"  Yes,"  she  answered  instantly.  "  I  care  about  stay 
ing  with  my  folks." 


THE  PRISONER  167 

The  homely  touch  almost  conquered  him.  He  thought 
perhaps  such  a  fierce  little  barbarian  might  even  find  it 
better  to  eat  bitter  bread  with  her  own  than  to  wander  out 
into  strange  flowery  paths. 

"Are  you  going  to  heaven,  too,  Lydia?"  he  ventured. 
"With  Anne?" 

"  I'm  going  everywhere  my  folks  go,"  she  said,  with 
composure.  "  Now  I  can't  talk  any  more.  I  told  Mary 
Nellen  I'd  dust  while  they  do  the  silver." 

The  atmosphere  of  a  perfectly  conventional  living  was 
about  them.  Jeffrey  had  to  adjure  himself  to  keep  awake 
to  the  difficulties  he  alone  had  made.  He  had  come  out 
to  confess  to  her  the  lawlessness  of  his  mind  toward  her, 
and  she  was  deciding  merely  to  go  on  living  with  him  and 
her  father,  which  meant,  in  the  first  place,  dusting  for 
Mary  Nellen.  They  walked  along  the  orchard  in  silence, 
and  Jeffrey,  with  relief,  also  took  a  side  track  to  the  ob 
vious.  Absently  his  eyes  travelled  along  the  orchard's 
level  length,  and  his  great  thought  came  to  him.  The 
ground  did  it.  The  earth  called  to  him.  The  dust  rose 
up  impalpably  and  spoke  to  him. 

"  Lydia,"  said  he,  "  I  see  what  to  do." 

"What?" 

The  startled  brightness  in  her  eyes  told  him  she  feared 
his  thought,  and,  not  knowing,  as  he  did,  how  great  it  was, 
suspected  him  of  tragic  plans  for  going  away. 

"  I'll  go  to  work  on  this  place.  I'll  plough  it  up.  I'll 
raise  things,  and  father  and  I'll  dig." 

As  he  watched  her  interrogatively  the  colour  faded  from 
her  face.  The  relief  of  hearing  that  homespun  plan  had 
chilled  her  blood,  and  she  was  faint  for  an  instant  with 
the  sickness  of  hearty  youth  that  only  knows  it  feels  odd 
to  itself  and  concludes  the  strangeness  is  of  the  soul.  But 
she  did  not  answer,  for  Anne  was  at  the  window,  signalling. 


168  THE  PRISONER 

"  Come  in,"  said  Lydia.     "  She  wants  us." 

Miss  Amabel,  in  a  morning  elegance  of  black  muslin  and 
silk  gloves,  was  in  the  library.  Anne  looked  excited  and 
the  colonel,  there  also,  quite  pleasurably  stirred.  Lydia 
was  hardly  within  the  door  when  Anne  threw  the  news  at 
her. 

"  Dancing  classes  !  " 

"  At  my  house,"  said  Miss  Amabel.  She  put  a  warm 
hand  on  Lydia's  shoulder  and  looked  down  at  her  admir 
ingly  :  wistfully  as  well.  "  Can  anything,"  the  look  said, 
"  be  so  young,  so  unthinkingly  beautiful  and  have  a  right 
to  its  own  richness?  How  could  we  turn  this  dower  into 
the  treasury  of  the  poor  and  yet  not  impoverish  the  child 
herself?"  "We'll  have  an  Italian  class  and  a  Greek. 
And  there  are  others,  you  know,  Poles,  Armenians,  Syrians, 
We'll  manage  as  many  as  we  can." 

They  sat  down  to  planning  classes  and  hours,  and  Jef 
frey,  looking  on,  noted  how  keen  the  two  girls  were,  how 
intent  and  direct.  They  balked  at  money.  If  the  classes 
were  for  the  poor,  they  proposed  giving  their  time  as  Miss 
Amabel  gave  her  house.  But  she  disposed  of  that  with  a 
conclusive  gravity,  and  a  touch,  Jeffrey  was  amused  to  see, 
of  the  Addington  manner.  Miss  Amabel  was  pure  Add- 
ington  in  all  her  unconsidered  impulses.  She  wanted  to 
give,  not  to  receive.  Yet  if  you  reminded  her  that  giving 
was  the  prouder  part,  she  would  vacate  her  ground  of 
privilege  with  a  perfect  simplicity  sweet  to  see.  When  she 
got  up  Jeffrey  rose  with  her,  and  though  he  took  the  hand 
she  offered  him,  he  said : 

"  I'm  going  along  with  you." 

And  they  were  presently  out  in  Addington  streets, 
walking  together  almost  as  it  might  have  been  when  they 
walked  from  Sunday  school  and  she  was  "  teacher  ".  He 
began  on  her  at  once. 


THE  PRISONER  169 

"  Amabel,  dear,  what  are  you  running  with  Weedon 
Moore  for?  " 

She  was  using  her  parasol  for  a  cane,  and  now,  in  in 
stinctive  remonstrance,  she  struck  it  the  more  forcibly  on 
the  sidewalk  and  had  to  stop  and  pull  it  out  from  a  worn 
space  between  the  bricks. 

"  I'm  glad  you  spoke  of  Weedon,"  she  said.  "  It's  giv 
ing  me  a  chance  to  say  some  things  myself.  You  know, 
Jeffrey,  you're  very  unjust  to  Weedon." 

"  No,  I'm  not,"  said  Jeff. 

"  Alston  Choate  is,  too." 

"  Choate  and  I  know  him,  better  than  you  or  any  other 
woman  can  in  a  thousand  years." 

"  You  think  he's  the  same  man  he  was  in  college." 

"  Fellows  like  Moore  don't  change.  There's  something 
inherently  rotten  in  'em  you  can't  sweeten  out." 

"  Jeffrey,  I  assure  you  he  has  changed.  He's  a  power 
for  good.  And  when  he  gets  his  nomination,  he'll  be  more 
of  a  power  yet." 

"Nomination.     For  what?" 

"  Mayor." 

"Weedon  Moore  mayor  of  this  town?  Why,  the  cub! 
We'll  duck  him,  Choate  and  I."  They  were  climbing  the 
rise  to  her  red  brick  house,  large  and  beautiful  and  kindly. 
It  really  looked  much  like  Miss  Amabel  herself,  a  little 
unkempt,  but  generous  and  belonging  to  an  older  time. 
They  went  in  and  Jeffrey,  while  she  took  off  her  bonnet 
and  gloves,  stood  looking  about  him  in  the  landscape- 
papered  hall. 

"  Go  into  the  east  room,  dear,"  said  she.  "  Why,  Jeff, 
what  is  it?" 

He  was  standing  still,  looking  flow  up  the  stairs. 

"  Oh,"  said  he,  "  I  believe  I'm.  going  to  cry.  It  hasn't 
changed  —  any  more  than  you  have.  You  darling !  " 


170  THE  PRISONER 

Miss  Amabel  put  her  hand  on  his  shoulder,  and  he  drew 
it  to  his  lips ;  and  then  she  slipped  it  through  his  arm  and 
they  went  into  the  east  room  together,  which  also  had  not 
changed,  and  Jeff  took  his  accustomed  place  on  the  sofa 
under  the  portrait  of  the  old  judge,  Miss  Amabel's  grand 
father.  Jeff  shook  off  sentiment,  the  softness  he  could 
not  afford. 

"  I  tell  you  I  won't  have  it,"  he  said.  "  Weedon  Moore 
isn't  going  to  be  mayor  of  this  town.  Besides  he  can't. 
He  hasn't  been  in  politics  — " 

"  More  or  less,"  said  she. 

"Run  for  office?" 

"  Yes." 

"  Ever  get  any  ?  " 

"  No." 

"  There !  what  d'l  tell  you?  " 

"  But  he  has  a  following  of  his  own  now,"  said  she,  in  a 
quiet  triumph,  he  thought.  "  Since  he  has  done  so  much 
for  labour." 

"What's  he  done?" 

"  He  has  organised  — " 

"Strikes?" 

"  Yes.     He's  been  all  over  the  state,  working." 

"And  talking?" 

"Why,  yes,  Jeff!  Don't  be  unjust.  He  has  to 
talk." 

"  Amabel,"  said  Jeffrey,  with  a  sudden  seriousness  that 
drew  her  renewed  attention,  "  have  you  the  slightest  idea 
what  kind  of  things  Moore  is  pouring  into  the  ears  of  these 
poor  devils  that  listen  to  him?  " 

She  hesitated. 

"  Have  you,  now?  "  he  insisted. 

"Well,  no,  Jeffrey.  I  haven't  heard  him.  There's 
rather  a  strcaig  prejudice  here  against  labour  meetings. 


THE  PRISONER  171 

So  Weedon  very  wisely  talks  to  the  men  when  he  can  get 
them  alone." 

"  Why  wisely  ?     Why  do  you  say  that  ?  " 

"  Because  we  want  to  spread  knowledge  without  rousing 
prejudice.  Then  there  isn't  so  much  to  fight." 

"  What  kind  of  knowledge  is  Weedon  Moore  spreading? 
Tell  me  that." 

Her  plain  face  glowed  with  the  beauty  of  her  aspiration. 

66  He  is  spreading  the  good  tidings,"  she  said  softly, 
"  good  tidings  of  great  joy." 

"  Don't  get  on  horseback,  dear,"  he  said,  inexorably, 
but  fondly.  "  I'm  a  plain  chap,  you  know.  I  have  to 
have  plain  talk.  What  are  the  tidings  ?  " 

She  looked  at  him  in  a  touched  solemnity. 

"  Don't  you  know,  Jeff,"  she  said,  "  the  workingman 
has  been  going  on  in  misery  all  these  centuries  because  he 
hasn't  known  his  own  power?  It's  like  a  man's  dying  of 
thirst  and  not  guessing  the  water  is  just  inside  the  rock 
and  the  rock  is  ready  to  break.  He's  only  to  look  and 
there  are  the  lines  of  cleavage."  She  sought  in  the  soft 
silk  bag  that  was  ever  at  her  hand,  took  out  paper  and  pen 
and  jotted  down  a  line. 

"  What  are  you  writing  there  ?  "  Jeffrey  asked,  with  a 
certainty  that  it  had  something  to  do  with  Moore. 

"  What  I  just  said,"  she  answered,  with  a  perfect  sim 
plicity.  "  About  lines  of  cleavage.  It's  a  good  figure  of 
speech,  and  it's  something  the  men  can  understand." 

"  For  Moore  ?     You're  writing  it  for  Moore  ?  " 

"  Yes."     She  slipped  the  pad  into  her  bag. 

"  Amabel,"  said  he,  helpless  between  inevitable  irritation 
and  tenderest  love  of  her,  "  you  are  a  perfectly  unspoiled 
piece  of  work  from  the  hand  of  God  Almighty.  But  if 
you're  running  with  Weedon  Moore,  you're  going  to  do  an 
awful  lot  of  harm." 


172  THE  PRISONER 

"  I  hope  not,  dear,"  she  said  gravely,  but  with  no  under 
standing,  he  saw,  that  her  pure  intentions  could  lead  her 
wrong. 

"  I've  heard  Weedon  Moore  talking  to  the  men." 

She  gave  him  a  look  of  acute  interest. 

"  Really,  Jeff?     Now,  where?  " 

"  The  old  circus-ground.  I  heard  him.  And  he's  pull 
ing  down,  Amabel.  He's  destroying.  He's  giving  those 
fellows  an  idea  of  this  country  that's  going  to  make  them 
hate  it,  trample  it  — "  He  paused  as  if  the  emotion  that 
choked  him  made  him  the  more  impatient  of  what  caused  it. 

"  That's  it,"  said  she,  her  own  face  settling  into  a 
mournful  acquiescence.  "  We've  earned  hate.  We  must 
accept  it.  Till  we  can  turn  it  into  love." 

"  But  he's  preaching  discontent." 

"  Ah,  Jeffrey,"  said  she,  "  there's  a  noble  discontent. 
Where  should  we  be  without  it  ?  " 

He  got  up,  and  shook  his  head  at  her,  smilingly,  ten 
derly.  She  had  made  him  feel  old,  and  alien  to  this 
strange  new  day. 

"  You're  impossible,  dear,"  said  he,  "  because  you're  so 
good.  You've  only  to  see  right  things  to  follow  them  and 
you  believe  everybody's  the  same." 

"But  why  not?"  she  asked  him  quickly.  "Am  I  to 
think  myself  better  than  they  are  ?  " 

"  Not  better.  Only  more  prepared.  By  generations 
of  integrity.  Think  of  that  old  boy  up  there."  He 
glanced  affectionately  at  the  judge,  a  friend  since  his 
childhood,  when  the  painted  eyes  had  followed  him  about 
the  room  and  it  had  been  a  kind  of  game  to  try  vainly  to 
escape  them.  "  Take  a  mellow  soil  like  your  inheritance 
and  the  inheritance  of  a  lot  of  'em  here  in  Addington. 
Plant  kindness  in  it  and  decency  and  — " 

"  And  love  of  man,"  said  Miss  Amabel  quietly. 


THE  PRISONER  173 

"  Yes.  Put  it  that  way,  if  you  like  it  better.  I  mean 
the  determination  to  play  a  square  game.  Not  to  gorge, 
but  make  the  pile  go  round.  Plant  in  that  kind  of  a  soil 
and,  George !  what  a  growth  you  get !  " 

"  I  don't  find  fewer  virtues  among  my  plainer  friends." 

"  No,  no,  dear !  But  you  do  find  less  —  less  back 
ground." 

"  That's  our  fault,  Jeff.  We've  made  their  back 
ground.  It's  a  factory  wall.  It's  the  darkness  of  a 
mine." 

"  Exactly.  Knock  a  window  in  here  and  there,  but 
don't  chuck  the  reins  of  government  into  the  poor  chaps' 
hands  and  tell  'em  to  drive  to  the  devil." 

Her  face  flamed  at  him,  the  bonfire's  light  when  preju 
dice  is  burned. 

"  I  know,"  she  said,  "  but  you're  too  slow.  You  want 
them  educated  first.  Then  you'll  give  them  something  — 
if  they  deserve  it." 

"  I  won't  give  them  my  country  —  or  Weedon  Moore's 
country  —  to  manhandle  till  they're  grown  up,  and  fit  to 
have  a  plaything  and  not  smash  it." 

"  I  would,  Jeffrey." 

"You  would?"   * 

"Yes.  Give  them  power.  They'll  learn  by  using  it. 
But  don't  waste  time.  Think  of  it !  All  the  winters  and 
summers  while  they  work  and  work  and  the  rest  of  us  eat 
the  bread  they  make  for  us." 

"  But,  good  God,  Amabel !  there  isn't  any  curse  on  work. 
If  your  Bible  tells  you  so,  it's  a  liar.  You  go  slow,  dear 
old  girl ;  go  slow." 

"  Go  slow?  "  said  Amabel,  smiling  at  him.  "  How  can 
I?  Night  and  day  I  see  those  people.  I  hear  them  cry 
ing  out  to  me." 

"  Well,  it's  uncomfortable.     But  it's  no  reason  for  your 


174  THE  PRISONER 

delivering  them  over  to  demagogues  like  Weedon  Moore." 

"  He's  not  a  demagogue." 

There  was  a  sad  bravado  in  her  smile,  and  he  answered 
with  an  obstinacy  he  was  willing  she  should  feel. 

"  All  the  same,  dear,  don't  you  try  to  make  him  tetrarch 
over  this  town.  The  old  judge  couldn't  stand  for  that. 
If  he  were  here  to-day  he  wouldn't  sit  down  at  the  same 
table  with  Weedie,  and  he  wouldn't  let  you." 

She  followed  him  to  the  door ;  her  comfortable  hand  was 
on  his  arm. 

"  Weedon  will  begin  his  campaign  this  fall,"  she  said. 
Evidently  she  felt  bound  to  define  her  standpoint  clearly. 

"  Where's  his  money  ?  "  They  were  at  the  door  and 
Jeffrey  turned  upon  her.  "  Amabel,  you're  not  going  to 
stake  that  whelp?" 

She  flushed,  from  guilt,  he  knew. 

"  I  am  not  doing  anything  unwise,"  she  said,  with  the 
Addington  dignity. 

Thereupon  Jeffrey  went  away  sadly. 


XVI 

Jeffrey  began  to  dig,  and  his  father,  without  definite  in 
tention,  followed  him  about  and  quite  eagerly  accepted 
lighter  tasks.  They  consulted  Denny  as  to  recognised 
ways  of  persuading  the  earth,  and  summoned  a  ploughman 
and  his  team,  and  all  day  Jeffrey  walked  behind  the  plough, 
not  holding  it,  for  of  that  art  he  was  ignorant,  but  in  pure 
admiration.  He  asked  questions  about  planting,  and  the 
ploughman,  being  deaf,  answered  in  a  forensic  bellow,  so 
that  Addington,  passing  the  brick  wall  in  its  goings  to 
and  fro,  heard,  and  communicated  to  those  at  home  that 
Jeffrey  Blake,  dear  fellow,  was  going  back  to  the  land. 
Jeffrey  did,  as  he  had  cynically  foreseen,  become  a  cause. 
All  persons  of  social  significance  came  to  call,  and  were, 
without  qualification,  kind.  Sometimes  he  would  not  see 
them,  but  Anne  one  day  told  him  how  wrong  he  was.  If 
he  hid  himself  he  put  a  burden  on  his  father,  who  stood  in 
the  breach,  and  talked  even  animatedly,  renewing  old  ac 
quaintance  with  a  dignified  assumption  of  having  nothing 
to  ignore.  But  when  the  visitors  were  gone  the  red  in  his 
cheek  paled  something  too  much,  and  Anne  thought  he 
was  being  unduly  strained. 

After  that  Jeffrey  doggedly  stayed  by.  He  proved 
rather  a  silent  host,  but  he  stood  up  to  the  occasion,  and 
even  answered  the  general  query  whether  he  was  going  into 
business  by  the  facer  that  he  and  his  father  had  gone  into 
it.  They  were  market-gardening.  The  visitors  regretted 
that,  so  far  as  Addington  manners  would  permit,  because 

175 


176  THE  PRISONER 

they  had  noticed  the  old  orchard  was  being  ploughed,  and 
that  of  course  meant  beans  at  least.  Some  of  the  older 
ladies  recalled  stories  of  dear  Doctor  Blake's  pacing  up 
and  down  beside  the  wall.  They  believed  you  could  even 
find  traces  of  the  sacred  path ;  but  one  day  Jeffrey  put  an 
end  to  that  credulous  ideal  by  saying  you  couldn't  now 
anyway,  since  it  had  been  ploughed.  Then,  he  saw,  he 
hurt  Addington  and  was  himself  disquieted.  Years  ago  he 
had  been  amused  when  he  hit  hard  against  it  and  they  flew 
apart  equally  banged ;  now  he  was  grown  up,  whether  to 
his  advantage  or  not,  and  it  looked  to  him  as  if  Addington 
ought  by  this  time  to  be  grown  up  too. 

It  was  another  Addington  altogether  from  the  one  he 
had  left,  though  a  surface  of  old  tradition  and  habit  still 
remained  to  clothe  it  in  a  semblance  of  past  dignity  and 
calm.  Not  a  public  cause  existed  in  the  known  world  but 
Addington  now  had  a  taste  of  it,  though  no  one  but  Miss 
Amabel  did  much  more  than  talk  with  fervour.  The  ladies 
who  had  once  gone  delicately  out  to  teas  and  church,  as 
sufficient  intercourse  with  this  world  and  preparation  for 
the  next,  now  had  clubs  and  classes  where  they  pounced  on 
subjects  not  even  mentionable  fifty  years  ago,  and  shook 
them  to  shreds  in  their  well-kept  teeth.  There  was 
sprightly  talk  about  class-consciousness,  and  young  women 
who,  if  their  incomes  had  been  dissipated  by  inadequate 
trusteeship,  would  once  have  taught  school  according  to  a 
gentle  ideal,  now  went  away  and  learned  to  be  social  work 
ers,  and  came  back  to  make  self-possessed  speeches  at  the 
Woman's  Club  and  present  it  with  new  theories  to  worry. 
This  all  went  on  under  the  sanction  of  Addington  manners, 
and  kept  concert  pitch  rather  high. 

On  all  topics  but  one  Addington  agreed  to  such  an  ex 
tent  that  discussion  really  became  more  like  axioms 
chanted  in  unison;  but  when  it  came  to  woman  suffrage 


THE  PRISONER  177 

society  silently  but  exactly  split.  There  were  those  who 
would  stick  at  nothing,  even  casting  a  vote.  There  were 
those  who  said  casting  a  vote  was  unwomanly,  and  you 
couldn't  possibly  leave  the  baby  long  enough  to  do  it. 
Others  among  the  antis  were  reconciled  to  its  coming,  if  it 
came  slowly  enough  not  to  agitate  us.  "  Of  course,"  said 
one  of  these,  a  Melvin  who  managed  her  ample  fortune  with 
the  acumen  of  a  financier,  "  it  will  come  sometime.  But 
we  are  none  of  us  ready.  We  must  delay  it  as  long  as  we 
can."  So  she  and  the  like-minded  drove  into  the  country 
round  and  talked  about  preventing  the  extension  of  the 
suffrage  to  women  until  hard-working,  meagre-living  peo 
ple  who  had  not  begun  to  think  much  about  votes,  save  as 
a  natural  prerogative  of  man,  thought  about  them  a  great 
deal,  and  incidentally  learned  to  organise  and  lobby,  and 
got  a  very  good  training  for  suffrage  when  it  should  come. 
It  did  no  harm,  nor  did  the  fervour  of  the  other  side  do 
good.  The  two  parties  got  healthfully  tired  with  the  ex 
ercise  and  "  go  "  of  it  all,  and  at  least  they  stirred  the  pot. 
But  whatever  they  said  or  did,  suffragists  and  antis  never, 
so  to  speak,  "  met ".  The  subject,  from  some  occult  sense 
of  decorum,  was  tabu.  If  an  anti  were  setting  forth  her 
views  when  a  suffragist  entered  the  room  she  instantly 
ceased  and  began  to  talk  about  humidity  or  the  Balkans. 
A  suffragist  would  no  more  have  marshalled  her  arguments 
for  the  overthrow  of  an  equal  than  she  would  have  cor 
rected  a  point  of  etiquette.  But  each  went  out  with  zeal 
into  New  England  villages  for  the  conversion  of  social 
underlings. 

When  they  elected  Jeffrey  into  a  cause  they  did  it  with 
a  rush,  and  they  also  elected  his  wife.  Through  her  un 
welcoming  door  poured  a  stream  of  visitors,  ostensibly  to 
call  on  Madame  Beattie,  but  really,  as  Esther  saw  with 
bitterness,  to  recommend  this  froward  wife  to  live  with  her 


178  THE  PRISONER 

husband.  Feeling  ran  very  high  there.  Addington,  to  a 
woman,  knew  exactly  the  ideal  thing  for  Esther  to  have 
done.  She  should  have  "  received  "  him  —  that  was  the 
phrase  —  and  helped  him  build  up  his  life  —  another 
phrase.  This  they  delicately  conveyed  to  her  in  accepted 
innuendos  Addington  knew  how  to  handle.  Esther  once 
told  Aunt  Patricia  there  were  women  selected  by  the  other 
women  to  "  do  their  dirty  work  ".  But  what  she  really 
meant  was  that  Addington  had  a  middle-aged  few  of  the  old 
stock  who,  with  an  arrogant  induration  in  their  own  posi 
tion,  out  of  which  no  attacking  humour  could  deliver  them, 
held,  as  they  judged,  the  contract  to  put  questions.  These 
it  was  who  would  ask  Esther  over  a  cup  of  tea :  "  Are  you 
going  on  living  in  this  house,  my  dear  ?  "  or :  "  Shall  you 
join  your  husband  at  his  father's?  And  will  his  father 
and  the  step-children  stay  on  there  ? "  And  the  other 
women,  of  a  more  circuitous  method  or  a  more  sensitive 
touch,  would  listen  and,  Esther  felt  sure,  discuss  after 
ward  what  the  inquisitors  had  found  out :  wirli  an  amused 
horror  of  the  inquisitors  and  a  grateful  relish  of  the  result. 
Esther  sometimes  thought  she  must  cry  aloud  in  answer ; 
but  though  a  flush  came  into  her  face  and  gave  her  an 
added  pathos,  she  managed,  in  a  way  of  gentle  obstinacy, 
to  say  nothing,  and  still  not  to  offend.  And  Madame 
Beattie  sat  by,  never  saving  her,  as  Esther  knew  she  might, 
out  of  her  infernal  cleverness,  but  imperturbably  and 
lightly  amused  and  smoking  cigarettes  all  over  the  tea 
things.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  tea  things  and  their  ex 
quisite  cloth  were  unpolluted,  but  Esther  saw  figuratively 
the  trail  of  smoke  and  ashes,  like  a  nicotian  Vesuvius,  over 
the  home.  She  still  hated  cigarettes,  which  Addington 
had  not  yet  accepted  as  a  feminine  diversion,  though  she 
had  the  slight  comfort  of  knowing  it  forgave  in  Madame 


THE  PRISONER  179 

Seattle  what  it  would  not  have  tolerated  in  an  Adding- 
tonian.  "  Foreign  ways,"  the  ladies  would  remark  to  one 
another.  "  And  she  really  is  a  very  distinguished  woman. 
They  say  she  visits  everywhere  abroad." 

Anne  and  Lydia  were  generally  approved  as  modest  and 
pretty  girls ;  and  Miss  Amabel's  classes  in  national  dances 
became  an  exceedingly  interesting  feature  of  the  town  life. 
Anne  and  Lydia  were  in  this  dancing  scheme  all  over. 
They  were  enchanted  with  it,  the  strangeness  and  charm 
of  these  odd  citizens  of  another  world,  and  made  friends 
with  little  workwomen  out  of  the  shops,  and  went  home  with 
them  to  see  old  pieces  of  silver  and  embroidery,  and  plan 
pageants  —  this  in  the  limited  English  common  to  them. 
Miss  Amabel,  too,  was  pleased,  in  her  wistful  way  that  al 
ways  seemed  to  be  thanking  you  for  making  things  come 
out  decently  well.  She  had  one  big  scheme:  the  building 
up  of  homespun  interests  between  old  Addington  and  these 
new  little  aliens  who  didn't  know  the  Addington  history  or 
its  mind  and  heart. 

One  night  after  a  dancing  class  in  her  dining-room  the 
girls  went,  with  pretty  good-nights,  and  Anne  with  them. 
She  was  hurrying  down  town  on  some  forgotten  errand,  and 
refused  Lydia's  company.  For  Lydia  was  tired,  and  left 
alone  with  Miss  Amabel,  she  settled  to  an  hour's  laziness. 
She  knew  Miss  Amabel  liked  having  her  there,  liked  her 
perhaps  better  than  Anne,  who  was  of  the  beautiful  old 
Addington  type  and  not  so  piquing.  Lydia  had,  across 
her  good  breeding,  a  bizarre  other  strain,  not  bohemian, 
not  gipsy,  but  of  a  creature  who  is  and  always  will  be, 
even  beyond  youth,  new  to  life.  There  were  few  conven 
tions  for  Lydia.  She  did  not  instinctively  follow  beaten 
paths.  If  the  way  looked  feasible  and  pleasant,  she  tut 
across. 


180  THE  PRISONER 

"  You're  a  little  tired,"  said  Miss  Amabel,  hesitating. 
She  knew  this  was  violating  the  etiquette  of  dancing.  To 
be  tired,  Anne  said,  and  Lydia,  too,  was  because  you  hadn't 
the  "  method  ". 

"  It  isn't  the  dancing,"  said  Lydia  at  once,  as  Miss 
Amabel  knew  she  would. 

"  No.  But  you've  seemed  tired  a  good  deal  of  the  time 
lately.  Does  anything  worry  you?  " 

"  No,"  said  Lydia  soberly.  She  looked  absent-minded, 
as  if  she  sought  about  for  what  did  worry  her. 

"  You  don't  think  your  father's  working  too  hard,  plant- 
ing?  » 

"  Oh,  no !  It's  good  for  him.  He  gets  frightfully 
tired.  They  both  do.  But  Farvie  sleeps  and  eats  and 
smokes.  And  laughs !  That's  Jeffrey.  He  can  always 
make  Farvie  laugh."  She  said  the  last  rather  wonder- 
ingly,  because  she  knew  Jeffrey  hadn't,  so  far  as  she  had 
seen  him,  much  light  give  and  take  and  certainly  no  hilar 
ity  of  his  own.  "  But  I  suppose,"  she  added  wisely,  as  she 
had  many  times  to  herself,  "  Farvie's  so  pleased  even  to 
look  at  him  and  think  he's  got  him  back." 

Miss  Amabel  disposed  a  pillow  more  invitingly  on  the 
old  sofa  that  had  spacious  hollows  in  it,  and  Lydia  obeyed 
the  motion  and  lay  down.  It  was  not,  she  thought,  be 
cause  she  was  tired.  Only  it  would  please  Miss  Amabel. 
But  the  heart  had  gone  out  of  her.  If  she  looked  as  she 
felt,  she  realised  she  must  be  wan.  But  it  takes  more  than 
the  sorrows  of  youth  to  wash  the  colour  out  of  it.  She 
felt  an  impulse  now  to  give  herself  away. 

"  It's  only,"  she  said,  "  we're  not  getting  anywhere. 
That  worries  me." 

"  With  your  work  ?  "  Miss  Amabel  was  waving  a  palm- 
leaf  fan,  from  no  necessity  but  the  tranquillity  induced  by 
its  rhythmic  sway. 


THE  PRISONER  181 

"  Oh,  no.  About  Jeffrey.  Didn't  you  know  we  meant 
to  clear  him,  Anne  and  I?  " 

"  Clear  him,  dear?     What  of?  " 

"  Why,  what  he  was  accused  of,"  said  Lydia. 

"  But  he  had  his  trial,  you  know.  He  was  found  guilty. 
He  pleaded  guilty,  dear.  That  was  why  he  was  sen 
tenced." 

"  Oh,  but  we  all  know  why  he  pleaded  guilty,"  said 
Lydia.  "  It  was  to  save  somebody  else." 

"  Not  exactly  to  save  her,"  said  Miss  Amabel.  "  She 
wouldn't  have  been  tried,  you  know.  She  wasn't  guilty  in 
that  sense.  Of  course  she  was,  before  the  fact.  But 
that's  not  being  legally  guilty.  It's  only  morally  so." 

Lydia  was  staring  at  her  with  wide  eyes. 

"  Do  you  mean  Esther?  "  she  asked. 

"  Why,  yes,  of  course  I  mean  Esther." 

"  But  I  don't.     I  mean  that  dreadful  man." 

She  put  her  feet  to  the  floor  and  sat  upright,  smoothing 
her  hair  with  hurried  fingers.  At  least  if  she  could  talk 
about  it  with  some  one  who  wasn't  Anne  with  whom  she 
had  talked  for  years  knowing  exactly  what  Anne  would  say 
at  every  point,  it  seemed  as  if  she  were  getting,  even  at  a 
snail's  pace,  upon  her  road.  But  Miss  Amabel  was  very 
dense. 

"  My  dear,"  said  she,  "  I  don't  know  what  you  mean." 

"  I  mean  the  man  that  was  in  the  scheme  with  him,  in  a 
way,  and  got  out  and  sold  his  shares  while  they  were  up, 
and  let  the  crash  come  on  Jeffrey  when  he  was  alone." 

"  James  Reardon?  " 

Lydia  hated  him  too  much  to  accept  even  a  knowledge 
of  his  name. 

"  He  was  a  promoter,  just  as  Jeffrey  was,"  she  insisted, 
with  her  pretty  sulkiness.  "  He  was  the  one  that  went 
West  and  looked  after  the  mines.  And  if  there  was  noth- 


18»  THE  PRISONER 

ing  in  them,  he  knew  it.  But  he  let  Jeffrey  go  on  trying 
to  —  to  place  the  shares  —  and  when  Jeffrey  went  under 
he  was  safely  out  of  the  way.  And  he's  guilty." 

Miss  Amabel  looked  at  her  thoughtfully  and  patiently. 

"  I'm  afraid  he  isn't  guilty  in  any  sense  the  law  would 
recognise,"  she  said.  "  You  see,  dear,  there  are  things  the 
law  doesn't  take  into  account.  It  can't.  You  believe  in 
Jeffrey.  So  do  I.  But  I  think  you'll  have  to  realise  Jef 
frey  lost  his  head.  And  he  did  do  wrong." 

"  Oh,  how  can  you  say  a  thing  like  that?  "  cried  Lydia, 
in  high  passion.  "  And  you've  known  him  all  your  life." 

Miss  Amabel  was  not  astute.  Her  nobility  made  it  a 
condition  of  her  mind  to  be  unsuspecting.  She  knew  the 
hidden  causes  of  Jeffrey's  downfall.  She  was  sure  his 
father  knew,  and  it  never  seemed  to  her  that  these  two 
sisters  were  less  than  sisters  to  him.  What  she  herself 
knew,  they  too  must  have  learned;  out  of  this  believing 
candour  she  spoke. 

"  You  mustn't  forget  there  was  the  necklace,  and  Ma 
dame  Beattie  expecting  to  be  paid." 

Lydia  was  breathless  in  her  extremity  of  surprise. 

"  What  necklace?  "  asked  she. 

"Don't  you  know?" 

Miss  Amabel's  voice  rose  upon  the  horror  of  her  own 
betrayal. 

"  What  do  you  mean  ?  "  Lydia  was  insisting,  with  an 
iteration  that  sounded  like  repeated  onslaughts,  a  mental 
pounce,  to  shake  it  out  of  her.  "What  do  you  mean?" 

Miss  Amabel  wore  the  dignified  Addington  aloofness. 

"  I  am  very  sorry,"  said  she.     "  I  have  been  indiscreet." 

"  But  you'll  tell  me,  now  you've  begun,"  panted  Lydia. 
"  You'll  have  to  tell  me  or  I  shall  go  crazy." 

"  We  must  both  control  ourselves,"  said  Miss  Amabel, 
with  a  further  retreat  to  the  decorum  of  another  genera- 


THE  PRISONER  183 

tion.     "  You  are  not  going  crazy,  Lydia.     We  are  both 
tired  and  we  feel  the  heat.     And  I  shall  not  tell  you." 

Lydia  ran  out  of  the  room.  There  was  no  other  word 
for  the  quickness  of  her  going.  She  fled  like  running 
water,  and  having  worn  no  hat,  she  found  herself  bare 
headed  in  the  street,  hurrying  on  to  Esther's.  An  in 
stinct  told  her  she  could  only  do  her  errand,  make  her  as 
sault,  it  seemed,  on  those  who  knew  what  she  did  not,  if 
she  never  paused  to  weigh  the  difficulties :  her  hatreds,  too, 
for  they  had  to  be  weighed.  Lydia  was  sure  she  hated 
Madame  Beattie  and  Esther.  She  would  not  willingly 
speak  to  them,  she  had  thought,  after  her  last  encounters. 
But  now  she  was  letting  the  knocker  fall  on  Esther's  door, 
and  had  asked  the  discreet  maid  with  the  light  eyelashes, 
who  always  somehow  had  an  air  of  secret  knowledge  and 
amusement,  if  Madame  Beattie  were  at  home,  and  gave  her 
name.  The  maid,  with  what  seemed  to  Lydia's  raw  con 
sciousness  an  ironical  courtesy,  invited  her  into  the  library 
and  left  her  there  in  its  twilight  tranquillity.  Lydia  stood 
still,  holding  one  of  her  pathetically  small,  hard-worked 
hands  over  her  heart,  and  shortly,  to  her  gratitude,  Sophy 
was  back  and  asked  her  to  go  up  to  Madame  Beattie's 
room. 

The  maid  accompanying  her,  Lydia  went,  with  her  light 
step,  afraid  of  itself  lest  it  turn  coward,  and  in  the  big 
dark  room  at  the  back  of  the  house,  its  gloom  defined  by 
the  point  of  light  from  a  shaded  reading  candle,  she  was 
left,  and  stood  still,  almost  wishing  for  Sophy  whose  foot 
falls  lessened  on  the  stairs.  There  were  two  bits  of  light 
in  the  room,  the  candle  and  Madame  Beattie's  face.  Mad 
ame  Beattie  had  taken  off  her  toupee,  and  for  Lydia  she 
had  not  troubled  to  put  it  on.  She  lay  on  the  bed  against 
pillows,  a  down  quilt  drawn  over  her  feet,  regardless  of 
the  seasonable  warmth,  and  a  disorder  of  paper-covered 


184  THE  PRISONER 

books  about  her.  One  she  held  in  her  ringed  hand,  and 
now  she  put  it  down,  her  eye-glasses  with  it,  and  turned 
the  candle  so  that  the  light  from  the  reflector  fell  on 
Lydia's  face. 

"  I  wasn't  sure  which  girl  it  was,"  she  said,  in  a  tone  of 
mild  good-nature.  "  It's  not  the  good  one.  It's  you, 
mischief.  Come  and  sit  down." 

Madame  Beattie  did  not  apologise  for  giving  audience 
in  her  bed-chamber.  In  the  old  royal  days  before  the 
downfall  of  her  kingdom  she  had  accorded  it  to  greater 
than  Lydia  French.  Lydia's  breath  came  so  fast  now  that 
it  hurt  her.  She  stepped  forward,  but  she  did  not  take 
the  low  chair  which  really  had  quite  a  comfortable  area 
left  beyond  Madame  Beattie's  corset  and  stockings.  She 
stood  there  in  the  circle  of  light  and  said  desperately : 

"  What  was  it  about  your  necklace?  " 

She  had  created  an  effect.  Madame  Beattie  herself 
gasped. 

"  For  God's  sake,  child,"  said  she,  "  what  do  you  know 
about  my  necklace?  " 

"  I  don't  know  anything,"  said  Lydia.  "  And  I  want  to 
know  everything  that  will  help  Jeff." 

She  broke  down  here,  and  cried  bitterly.  Madame 
Beattie  lay  there  looking  at  her,  at  first  with  sharp  eyes 
narrowed,  as  if  she  rather  doubted  whose  emissary  Lydia 
might  be.  Then  her  face  settled  into  an  astonished  yet 
astute  calm  and  wariness. 

"You'll  have  to  sit  down,"  said  she.  "It's  a  long 
story."  So  Lydia  sank  upon  the  zone  left  by  the  corset 
and  stockings.  "Who's  been  talking  to  you?"  asked 
Madame  Beattie:  but  Lydia  looked  at  her  and  dumbly 
shook  her  head.  "Jeff?" 

"No.     Oh,  no!" 

"His  father?" 


THE  PRISONER  185 

"Farvie?     Not  a  word." 

Madame  Beattie  considered. 

"  What  business  is  it  of  jours  ?  "  she  asked. 

Lydia  winced.  She  was  used  to  softness  from  Anne  and 
the  colonel.  But  she  controlled  herself.  If  she  meant  to 
enter  on  the  task  of  exonerating  Jeffrey,  she  must,  she 
knew,  make  herself  impervious  to  snubs. 

"  Anne  and  I  are  doing  all  we  can  to  help  Jeffrey,"  she 
said.  "  He  doesn't  know  it.  Farvie  doesn't  know  it. 
But  there's  something  about  a  necklace.  And  it  had  ever 
so  much  to  do  with  Jeffrey  and  his  case.  And  I  want  to 
know." 

Madame  Beattie  chuckled.  Her  worn  yellowed  face 
broke  into  satirical  lines,  hateful  ones,  Lydia  thought. 
She  was  like  a  jeering  unpleasant  person  carved  for  a 
cathedral  and  set  up  among  the  saints. 

"  I'll  tell  you  about  my  necklace,"  said  she.  "  I'm  per 
fectly  willing  to.  Perhaps  you  can  do  something  about  it. 
Something  for  me,  too." 

It  was  a  strange,  vivid  picture :  that  small  arc  of  light 
augmenting  the  dusk  about  them,  and  Lydia  sitting  rapt 
in  expectation  while  Madame  Beattie's  yellowed  face 
lay  upon  the  obscurity,  an  amazing  portraiture  against 
the  dark.  It  was  a  picture  of  a  perfect  consistency,  of 
youth  and  innocence  and  need  coming  to  the  sybil  for  a 
reading  of  the  leaves  of  life. 

"  You  see,  my  dear,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  "  years  ago 
I  had  a  necklace  given  me  —  diamonds."  She  said  it  with 
emotion  even.  No  one  ever  heard  her  rehearse  her  tri 
umphs  on  the  lyric  stage.  They  were  the  foundation  of 
such  dignity  as  her  life  had  known ;  but  the  gewgaws  time 
had  flung  at  her  she  did  like,  in  these  lean  years,  to  finger 
over.  "  It  was  given  me  by  a  Royal  Personage.  He  had 
to  do  a  great  many  clever  things  to  get  ahead  of  his  gov- 


186  THE  PRISONER 

ernment  and  his  exchequer  to  give  me  such  a  necklace. 
But  he  did." 

"  Why  did  he?  "  Lydia  asked. 

It  was  an  innocent  question  designed  to  keep  the  sybil 
going.  Madame  Beattie's  eyes  narrowed  slightly.  You 
could  see  what  she  had  been  in  the  day  of  her  power. 

"  He  had  to,"  said  she,  with  an  admiringly  dramatic 
simplicity.  "  I  wanted  it." 

"  But  — "  began  Lydia,  and  Madame  Beattie  put  up  a 
small  hand  with  a  gesture  of  rebuttal. 

"  Well,  time  went  on,  and  he  needed  the  necklace  back. 
However,  that  doesn't  belong  to  the  story.  Some  years 
ago,  just  before  your  Jeff  got  into  trouble,  I  came  over 
here  to  the  States.  I  was  singing  then  more  or  less." 
A  concentrated  power,  of  even  a  noble  sort,  came  into  her 
face.  There  was  bitterness  too,  for  she  had  to  remember 
how  disastrous  a  venture  it  had  been.  "  I  needed  money, 
you  understand.  I  couldn't  have  got  an  audience  over 
there.  I  thought  here  they  might  come  to  hear  me  —  to 
say  they'd  heard  me  —  the  younger  generation  —  and  see 
my  jewels.  I  hadn't  many  left.  I'd  sold  most  of  them. 
Well,  I  was  mistaken.  I  couldn't  get  a  house.  The 
fools ! "  Scorn  ate  up  her  face  alive  and  opened  it  out,  a 
sneering  mask.  They  were  fools  indeed,  she  knew,  who 
would  not  stir  the  ashes  of  such  embers  in  search  of  one 
spark  left.  "  I'm  a  very  strong  woman.  But  I  rather 
broke  down  then.  I  came  here  to  Esther.  She  was  the 
only  relation  I  had,  except  my  stepsister,  and  she  was  off 
travelling.  Susan  was  always  ashamed  of  me.  She  went 
to  Europe  on  purpose.  Well,  I  came  here.  And  Esther 
wished  I  was  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea.  But  she  liked  my 
necklace,  and  she  stole  it." 

Esther,  as  Lydia  had  seen  her  sitting  in  a  long  chair 
and  eating  candied  fruit,  had  been  a  figure  of  such  civilised 


THE  PRISONER  187 

worth,  however  odious,  that  Lydia  said  involuntarily,  in  a 
loud  voice: 

"  She  couldn't.     I  don't  believe  it." 

"  Oh,  but  she  did,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  looking  at  her 
with  the  coolness  of  one  who  holds  the  cards.  "  She  owned 
she  did." 

"To  you?" 

"  To  Jeff.  He  was  madly  in  love  with  her  then.  Mar 
ried,  you  understand,  but  frightfully  in  love.  Yes,  she 
owned  it.  I  always  thought  that  was  why  he  wasn't  sorry 
to  go  to  jail.  If  he'd  stayed  out  there  was  the  question  of 
the  necklace.  And  Esther.  He  didn't  know  what  to  do 
with  her." 

"  But  he  made  her  give  it  back,"  said  Lydia,  out  of  agon 
ised  certainty  that  she  must  above  all  believe  in  him. 

"  He  couldn't.     She  said  she'd  lost  it." 

Lydia  stared  at  her,  and  her  own  face  went  white.  Now 
the  picture  of  youth  and  age  confronting  each  other  was 
of  the  sybil  dealing  inexorable  hurts  and  youth  anguished 
in  the  face  of  them. 

"  She  said  she'd  lost  it,"  Madame  Beattie  went  on,  in 
almost  chuckling  enjoyment  of  her  tale.  "  She  said  it  had 
bewitched  her.  That  was  true  enough.  She'd  gone  to 
New  York.  She  came  back  by  boat.  Crazy  thing  for  a 
woman  to  do.  And  she  said  she  stayed  on  deck  late,  and 
stood  by  the  rail  and  took  the  necklace  out  of  her  bag  to 
hold  it  up  in  the  moonlight.  And  it  slipped  out  of  her 
hands." 

"Into  the  water?" 

"  She  said  so." 

"  You  don't  believe  it."  Lydia  read  that  clearly  in  the 
contemptuous  old  face. 

"Well,  now,  I  ask  you,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  "was 
there  ever  such  a  silly  tale?  A  young  woman  of  New 


188  THE  PRISONER 

England  traditions  —  yes,  they're  ridiculous,  but  you've 
got  to  reckon  with  them  —  she  comes  home  on  a  Fall  River 
boat  and  doesn't  even  stay  in  her  cabin,  but  hangs  round 
on  decks  and  plays  with  priceless  diamonds  in  the  moon 
light.  Why,  it's  enough  to  make  the  cat  laugh." 

Madame  Beattie,  in  spite  of  her  cosmopolitan  reign,  was 
at  least  local  enough  to  remember  the  feline  similes  Lydia 
put  such  dependence  on,  and  she  used  this  one  with  relish. 
Lydia  felt  the  more  at  home. 

"  But  what  did  she  do  with  it?  "  she  insisted. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Madame  Beattie  idly.  "  Put  it  in 
a  safety  deposit  in  New  York  perhaps.  Don't  ask  me." 

"But  don't  you  care?"  cried  Lydia,  all  of  a  heat  of 
wonder  —  terror  also  at  melodramatic  thieving  here  in 
simple  Addington. 

"  I  can  care  about  things  without  screaming  and  sob 
bing,"  said  Madame  Beattie  briefly.  "  Though  I  sobbed  a 
little  at  the  time.  I  was  a  good  deal  unstrung  from  other 
causes.  But  of  course  I  laid  it  before  Jeff,  as  her  hus 
band  — " 

"  He  must  have  been  heartbroken." 

"  Well,  he  was  her  husband.  He  was  responsible  for 
her,  wasn't  he?  I  told  him  I  wouldn't  expose  the  creature. 
Only  he'd  have  to  pay  me  for  the  necklace." 

The  yellow-white  face  wavered  before  Lydia.  She  was 
trying  to  make  her  brain  accept  the  raw  material  Madame 
Beattie  was  pouring  into  it  and  evolve  some  product  she 
could  use. 

"But  he  couldn't  pay  you.  He'd  just  got  into  diffi 
culties.  You  said  so." 

"  Bless  you,  he  hadn't  got  into  any  difficulty  until  Es 
ther  pushed  him  in  by  helping  herself  to  my  necklace.  He 
turned  crazy  over  it.  He  hadn't  enough  to  pay  for  it. 
So  he  went  into  the  market  and  tried  a  big  coup  with  all  his 


THE  PRISONER  189 

own  money  and  the  money  he  was  holding  —  people  sub 
scribed  for  his  mines,  you  know,  or  whatever  they  were  — 
and  that  minute  there  was  a  panic.  And  the  courts,  or 
whatever  it  was,  got  hold  of  him  for  using  the  mails  for 
fraudulent  purposes  or  whatever,  and  he  lost  his  head. 
And  that's  all  there  was  about  it." 

Lydia's  thoughts  were  racing  so  fast  it  seemed  to  her 
that  she  —  some  inner  determined  frightened  self  in  her 
—  was  flying  to  overtake  them. 

"  Then  you  did  it,"  she  said.  "  You !  you  forced  him, 
you  pushed  him  — " 

"  To  pay  me  for  my  necklace,"  Madame  Beattie  sup 
plied.  "  Of  course  I  did.  It  was  a  very  bad  move,  as  it 
proved.  I  was  a  fool ;  but  then  I  might  have  known.  Old 
Lepidus  told  me  the  conjunction  was  bad  for  me." 

"Who  was  Lepidus?" 

"  The  astrologer.  He  died  last  month,  the  fool,  and 
never  knew  he  was  going  to.  But  he'd  encouraged  me  to 
come  on  my  concert  tour,  and  when  that  went  wrong  I  lost 
confidence.  It  was  a  bad  year,  a  bad  year." 

A  troop  of  conclusions  were  rushing  at  Lydia,  all  de 
manding  to  be  fitted  in. 

"  But  you've  come  back  here,"  she  said,  incredulous  that 
things  as  they  actually  were  could  supplement  the  foolish 
tale  Madame  Beattie  might  have  stolen  out  of  a  silly  book. 
"You  think  Esther  did  such  a  thing  as  that,  and  yet 
you're  here  with  her  in  this  house." 

"  That's  why  I'm  here,"  said  Madame  Beattie  pa 
tiently.  "  Jeff's  back  again,  and  the  necklace  hasn't  been 
fully  paid  for.  I've  kept  my  word  to  him.  I  haven't  ex 
posed  his  wife,,  and  yet  he  hasn't  recognised  my  not  doing 
it." 

The  vision  of  Jeffrey  fleeing  before  the  lash  of  this 
implacable  taskmaster  was  appalling  to  Lydia. 


190  THE  PRISONER 

"  But  he  can't  pay  you,"  said  she.  "  He's  no  money. 
Not  even  to  settle  with  his  creditors." 

"  That's  it,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "  He's  got  to  make 
it.  And  I'm  his  first  creditor.  I  must  be  paid  first." 

"  You  haven't  told  him  so  ?  "  said  Lydia,  in  a  manner 
of  fending  her  off. 

"  It  isn't  time.  He  hasn't  recovered  his  nerve.  But  he 
will,  digging  in  that  absurd  garden." 

"  And  when  you  think  he  has,  you'll  tell  him?  " 

"  Why,  of  course."  Madame  Beattie  reached  for  her 
book  and  smoothed  the  pages  open  with  a  beautiful  hand. 
"  It'll  do  him  good,  too.  Bring  him  out  of  thinking  he's 
a  man  of  destiny,  or  whatever  it  is  he  thinks.  You  tell 
him.  I  daresay  you've  got  some  influence  with  him. 
That's  why  I've  gone  into  it  with  you." 

"  But  you  said  you  promised  him  not  to  tell  all  this 
about  Esther.  And  you've  told  me." 

"  That's  why.  Get  him  to  work.  Spur  him  up.  Talk 
about  his  creditors.  Now  run  away.  I  want  to  read." 


XVII 

Lydia  did  run  away  and  really  ran,  home,  to  see  if  the 
dear  surroundings  of  her  life  were  intact  after  all  she  had 
heard.  Since  this  temporary  seclusion  in  a  melodramatic 
tale,  she  almost  felt  as  if  she  should  never  again  see  the 
vision  of  Mary  Nellen  making  cake  or  Anne  brushing  her 
long  hair  and  looking  like  a  placid  saint.  The  library  was 
dim,  but  she  heard  interchanging  voices  there,  and  knew 
Jeffrey  and  his  father  were  in  tranquil  talk.  So  she  sped 
upstairs  to  Anne's  room,  and  there  Anne  was  actually 
brushing  her  hair  and  wearing  precisely  that  look  of  even 
ing  peace  Lydia  had  seen  so  many  times. 

"  I  thought  I'd  go  to  bed  early,"  she  said,  laying  down 
the  brush  and  gathering  round  her  hair  to  braid  it. 
"Why,  Lyd!" 

It  was  a  hot  young  messenger  invading  her  calm.  Anne 
looked  like  one  who,  the  day  done,  was  placidly  awaiting 
night ;  but  Lydia  was  the  day  itself,  her  activities  still  un 
finished. 

"  I've  found  it  out,"  she  announced.  "  All  of  it.  She 
made  him  do  it." 

Then,  while  Anne  stared  at  her,  she  sat  down  and  told 
her  story,  vehemently,  with  breaks  of  breathless  inquiry  as 
to  what  Anne  might  think  of  a  thing  like  this,  finally  with 
dragging  utterance,  for  her  vitality  was  gone ;  and  at  the 
end,  challenging  Anne  with  a  glance,  she  turned  cold: 
for  it  came  over  her  that  Anne  did  not  believe  her. 

Anne  began  braiding  her  hair  again.     During  Lydia's 

191 


192  THE  PRISONER 

incredible  story  she  had  let  it  slip  from  her  hand.  And 
Lydia  could  see  the  fingers  that  braided  were  trembling,  as 
Anne's  voice  did,  too. 

"  What  a  dreadful  old  woman !  "  said  Anne. 

"Madame  Beattie?  "  Lydia  asked  quickly.  "Oh,  no, 
she's  not,  Anne.  I  like  her." 

"Like  her?  A  woman  like  that?  She  doesn't  even 
look  clean." 

Lydia  answered  quite  eagerly. 

"  Oh,  yes,  Anne,  I  really  like  her.  I  thought  I  didn't 
when  I  heard  her  talk.  Sometimes  I  hated  her.  But  I 
understand  her  somehow.  And  she's  clean.  Really  she 
is.  It's  the  kind  of  clothes  she  wears."  Lydia,  to  her 
own  surprise  at  this  tragic  moment,  giggled  a  little  here. 
Madame  Beattie,  when  in  full  fig,  as  she  had  first  seen  her, 
looked  to  her  like  pictures  of  ancient  hearses  with  plumes. 
"  She's  all  right,"  said  Lydia.  "  She's  just  going  to  have 
what  belongs  to  her,  that's  all.  And  if  I  were  in  her  place 
and  felt  as  she  does,  I  would,  too." 

Anne,  with  an  air  of  now  being  ready  for  bed,  threw  the 
finished  braid  over  her  back.  She  was  looking  at  Lydia 
with  her  kind  look,  but,  Lydia  could  also  see,  compassion 
ately. 

"  But,  Lyd,"  she  said,  "  the  reason  I  call  her  a  dreadful 
old  woman  is  that  she's  told  you  all  this  rigmarole.  It 
makes  me  quite  hot.  She  sha'n't  amuse  herself  by  taking 
you  in  like  that.  I  won't  have  it." 

"  Anne,"  said  Lydia,  "  it's  true.  Don't  you  see  it's 
true?" 

"  It's  a  silly  story,"  said  Anne.  She  could  imagine  cer 
tain  things,  chiefly  what  men  and  women  would  like,  in 
order  to  make  them  comfortable,  but  she  had  no  appetite 
for  the  incredible.  "  Do  you  suppose  Esther  would  have 
stolen  her  aunt's  diamonds?  Or  was  it  pearls?  " 


THE  PRISONER  193 

"  Yes,  I  do,"  said  Lydia  stoutly.     "  It's  just  like  her." 

"  She  might  do  other  things,  different  kinds  of  things 
that  are  just  as  bad.  But  stealing,  Lyd!  Why,  think! 
Esther's  a  lady." 

"  Ladies  are  just  like  anybody  else,"  said  Lydia  sulkily. 
She  thought  she  might  have  to  consider  that  when  she  was 
alone,  but  at  this  moment  the  world  was  against  her  and 
she  had  to  catch  up  the  first  generality  she  could  find. 

"  And  for  a  necklace  to  be  so  valuable,"  said  Anne, 
"  valuable  enough  for  Jeff  to  risk  everything  he  had  to  try 
to  pay  for  it  — 

Lydia  felt  firmer  ground.  She  read  the  newspapers  and 
Anne  did  not. 

"  Now,  Anne,"  said  she,  "  you're  'way  off.  Diamonds 
cost  thousands  and  thousands  of  dollars,  and  so  do 
pearls." 

"  Why,  yes,"  said  Anne,  "  royal  jewels  or  something  of 
that  sort.  But  a  diamond  necklace  brought  here  to  Ad- 
dington  in  Madame  Beattie's  bag  — " 

Lydia  got  up  and  went  over  to  her.  Her  charming  face 
was  hot  with  anger,  and  she  looked,  too,  so  much  a  child 
that  she  might  in  a  minute  stamp  her  foot  or  scream. 

"  Why,  you  simpleton !  "  said  she. 

"  Lydia ! "  Anne  threw  in,  the  only  stop-gap  she  could 
catch  at  in  her  amaze.  This  was  her  "  little  sister  ",  but 
of  a  complexion  she  had  never  seen. 

"  Don't  you  know  what  kind  of  a  person  Madame  Beat- 
tie  is?  Why,  she's  a  princess.  She's  more  than  a  prin 
cess.  She's  had  kings  and  emperors  wallowing  round  the 
floor  after  her,  begging  to  kiss  her  hand." 

Anne  looked  at  her.  Lydia  afterward,  in  her  own  room, 
thought,  with  a  gale  of  hysterical  laughter,  "  She  just 
looked  at  me."  And  Anne  couldn't  find  a  word  to  crush 
the  little  termagant.  Everything  that  seemed  to  pertain 


194  THE  PRISONER 

was  either  satirical,  as  to  ask,  "  Did  she  tell  you  so  ?  "  or 
compassionate,  implying  cerebral  decay.  But  she  did  ven 
ture  the  compassion. 

"  Lydia,  don't  you  think  you'd  better  go  to  bed?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Lydia  promptly,  and  went  out  and  shut 
the  door. 

And  on  the  way  to  her  room,  Anne  noted,  she  was  sing 
ing,  or  in  a  fashion  she  had  in  moments  of  triumph,  tooting 
through  closed  lips,  like  a  trumpet,  the  measures  of  a 
march.  In  half  an  hour  Anne  followed  her,  to  listen  at  her 
door.  Lydia  was  silent.  Anne  hoped  she  was  asleep. 

In  the  morning  there  was  the  little  termagant  again  with 
that  same  triumph  on  her  face,  talking  more  than  usual  at 
the  breakfast  table,  and  foolishly,  as  she  hadn't  since  Jef 
frey  came.  It  had  always  been  understood  that  Lydia  had 
times  of  foolishness ;  but  it  had  seemed,  after  Jeffrey  ap 
peared  among  them  clothed  in  tragedy,  that  everything 
would  be  henceforth  on  a  dignified,  even  an  austere  basis. 
But  here  she  was,  chaffing  the  colonel  and  chattering  child 
ish  jargon  to  Anne.  Jeffrey  looked  at  her,  first  with  a 
tolerant  surprise.  Then  he  smiled.  Seeing  her  so  light- 
hearted  he  was  pleased.  This  was  a  Lydia  he  approved  of. 
He  need  neither  run  clear  of  her  poetic  emotions  nor  curse 
himself  for  calling  on  them.  He  went  out  to  his  hoeing 
with  an  unformulated  idea  that  the  tension  of  social  life 
had  let  up  a  little. 

Lydia  did  no  dusting  of  tables  or  arranging  of  flowers 
in  a  vase.  By  a  hand  upon  Anne's  arm  she  convoyed  her 
into  the  hall,  and  said  to  her : 

"  Get  your  hat.  We're  going  to  see  Mr.  Alston 
Choate." 

"  What  for?  "  asked  Anne. 

"  I'm  going  to  tell  him  what  Madame  Beattie  told  me." 
Lydia's  colour  was  high.  She  looked  prodigiously  excited, 


THE  PRISONER  195 

and  as  if  something  was  so  splendid  it  could  hardly  be 
true.  And  then,  as  Anne  continued  to  stare  at  her  with 
last  night's  stare,  she  added,  not  as  if  she  launched  a 
thunderbolt,  but  as  giving  Anne  something  precious  that 
would  please  her  very  much :  "  I'm  going  to  engage 
him  for  Jeffrey's  case.  Get  your  hat,  Anne.  Or  your 
parasol.  My  nose  doesn't  burn  as  yours  does.  Come, 
come." 

She  stood  there  impatiently  tapping  her  foot  as  she 
used  to,  years  ago,  when  mother  was  slow  about  taking 
her  out  in  the  p'ram.  Anne  turned  away. 

"  You're  a  Silly  Billy,"  said  she.  "  You're  not  going  to 
see  Mr.  Choate." 

"  Won't  you  go  with  me  ?  "  Lydia  inquired. 

"  No,  of  course  I  sha'n't.     And  you  won't  go,  either." 

"  Yes,  I  shall,"  said  Lydia.     «  I'm  gone." 

And  she  was,  out  of  the  door  and  down  the  walk.  Anne, 
following  helplessly  a  step,  thought  she  must  be  running, 
she  was  so  quickly  lost.  But  Lydia  was  not  running. 
With  due  respect,  taught  her  by  Anne,  for  the  customs  of 
Addington,  she  had  put  on  her  head  the  little  white-rose- 
budded  hat  she  had  snatched  from  the  hall  and  fiercely 
pinned  it,  and  she  was  walking,  though  swiftly,  in  great 
decorum  to  Madison  Street  where  the  bank  was  and  the 
post-office  and  the  best  stores,  and  upstairs  in  the  great 
Choate  building,  the  office  of  Alston  Choate.  Lydia 
tapped  at  the  office  door,  but  no  one  answered.  Then  she 
began  to  dislike  her  errand,  and  if  it  had  not  been  for  the 
confounding  of  Anne,  perhaps  she  would  have  gone  home. 
She  tapped  again  and  hurt  her  knuckles,  and  that  brought 
her  courage  back. 

"  Come  in,"  called  a  voice,  much  out  of  patience,  it 
seemed.  She  opened  the  door  and  there  saw  Alston 
Choate,  his  feet  on  the  table,  reading  "  Trilby."  Alston 


196  THE  PRISONER 

thought  he  had  a  right  to  at  least  one  chapter;  he  had 
opened  his  mail  and  dictated  half  a  dozen  letters,  and  the 
stenographer,  in  another  room,  was  writing  them  out. 
He  looked  up  under  a  frowning  brow,  and  seeing  her  there, 
a  Phillis  come  to  town,  shy,  rosy,  incredible,  threw  his 
book  to  the  table  and  put  down  his  feet. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  he,  getting  up,  and  then 
Lydia,  seeing  him  in  the  attitude  of  conventional  deference, 
began  to  feel  proper  supremacy.  She  spoke  with  a  de 
mure  dignity  of  which  the  picturesque  value  was  well  known 
to  her. 

"  I've  come  to  engage  you  for  our  case." 

He  stared  at  her  an  instant  as  Anne  had,  and  she  sink- 
ingly  felt  he  had  no  confidence  in  her.  But  he  recovered 
himself.  That  was  not  like  Anne.  She  had  not  recovered 
at  all. 

"  Will  you  sit  down?  "  he  said. 

He  drew  forward  a  chair.  It  faced  the  light,  and 
Lydia  noted,  when  he  had  taken  the  opposite  one,  that 
they  were  in  the  technical  position  for  inquisitor  and  vic 
tim.  He  waited  scrupulously,  and  when  she  had  seated 
herself,  also  sat  down. 

"  Now,"  said  he. 

It  was  gravely  said,  and  reconciled  Lydia  somewhat  to 
the  hardness  of  her  task.  At  least  he  would  not  really 
make  light  of  her,  like  Anne.  Only  your  family  could  do 
that.  She  sat  there  charming,  childlike  even,  all  soft  sur 
faces  and  liquid  gleam  of  eyes,  so  Very  young  that  she  was 
wistful  in  it.  She  hesitated  in  her  beginning. 

"  I  understand,"  she  said,  "  that  everything  I  say  to  you 
will  be  in  confidence.  0  Mr.  Choate !  "  she  implored  him, 
with  a  sudden  breaking  of  her  self-possession,  "  you 
wouldn't  tell,  would  you  ?  " 

Alston  Choate  did  not  allow  a  glint  to  lighten  the  grave 


THE  PRISONER  197 

kindliness  of  his  glance.  Perhaps  he  felt  no  amusement ; 
she  was  his  client  and  very  sweet. 

"  Never,"  said  he,  in  the  manner  of  an  uncle  to  a  child. 
"  Tell  me  anything  you  like.  I  shall  respect  your  confi 
dence." 

"  I  saw  Madame  Beattie  last  night,"  said  Lydia ;  and  she 
went  on  to  tell  what  Madame  Beattie  had  said.  She 
warmed  to  it,  and  being  of  a  dramatic  type,  she  coloured 
the  story  as  Madame  Beattie  might  have  done.  There  was 
a  shade  of  cynicism  here,  a  tang  of  worldliness  there ;  and 
it  sounded  like  the  hardest  fact.  But  when  she  came  to 
Esther,  she  saw  his  glance  quicken  and  fasten  on  hers  the 
more  keenly,  and  when  she  told  him  Madame  Beattie  be 
lieved  the  necklace  had  not  been  lost  at  all,  he  was  looking 
at  her  with  astonishment  even. 

"  You  say  — "  he  began,  and  made  her  rehearse  it  all 
again  in  snatches.  He  cross-examined  her,  not,  it  seemed, 
as  if  he  wished  to  prove  she  lied,  but  to  take  in  her  mon 
strous  truth.  And  after  they  had  been  over  it  two  or 
three  times  and  she  felt  excited  and  breathless  and  greatly 
fagged  by  the  strain  of  saying  the  same  thing  in  different 
ways,  she  saw  in  his  face  the  look  she  had  seen  in  Anne's. 

"  Why,"  she  cried  out,  in  actual  pain,  "  you  don't  be 
lieve  me." 

Choate  didn't  answer  that.  He  sat  for  a  minute,  con 
sidering  gravely,  and  then  threw  down  the  paper  knife  he 
had  been  bending  while  she  talked.  It  was  ivory,  and  it 
gave  a  little  shallow  click  on  the  table  and  that,  slight  as  it 
was,  made  her  nerves  jump.  She  felt  suddenly  that  she 
was  in  deeper  than  she  had  expected  to  be. 

"  Do  you  realise,"  he  began  gravely,  "  what  you  accuse 
Mrs.  Blake  of?" 

Lydia  had  not  been  used  to  think  of  her  by  that  name 
and  she  asked,  with  lifted  glance: 


198  THE  PRISONER 

"Esther?" 

«  Yes.     Mrs.  Jeffrey  Blake." 

"  She  took  the  necklace,"  said  Lydia.  She  spoke  with 
the  dull  obstinacy  that  made  Anne  shake  her  sometimes 
and  then  kiss  her  into  kindness,  she  was  so  pretty. 

But  Alston  Choate,  she  saw,  was  not  going  to  find  it  a 
road  to  prettiness.  He  was  after  the  truth  like  a  dog  on 
a  scent,  and  he  didn't  think  he  had  it  yet. 

"  Madame  Beattie,"  he  said,  "  tells  you  she  believes  that 
Esther  — "  his  voice  slipped  caressingly  on  the  word  with 
the  lovingness  of  usage,  and  Lydia  saw  he  called  her 
Esther  in  his  thoughts  — "  Madame  Beattie  tells  you  she 
believes  that  Esther  did  this  —  this  incredible  thing." 

The  judicial  aspect  fell  away  from  him,  and  the  last 
words  carried  only  the  man's  natural  distaste.  Lydia  saw 
now  that  whether  she  was  believed  or  not,  she  was  bound 
to  be  most  unpopular.  But  she  stood  to  her  guns. 

"  Madame  Beattie  knows  it.  Esther  owned  it,  I  told 
you." 

"  Owned  it  to  Madame  Beattie?  " 

"  To  Jeff,  anyway.     Madame  Beattie  says  so." 

"  Do  you  think  for  a  moment  she  was  telling  you  the 
truth?  " 

"  But  that's  just  the  kind  of  women  they  are,"  said 
Lydia,  at  once  reckless  and  astute.  "  Esther's  just  the 
woman  to  take  a  necklace,  and  Madame  Beattie's  just  the 
woman  to  tell  you  she's  taken  it." 

"  Miss  Lydia,"  said  Choate  gravely,  "  I'm  bound  to  warn 
you  in  advance  that  you  mustn't  draw  that  kind  of  in 
ference." 

Lydia  lost  her  temper.  It  seemed  to  her  she  had  been 
talking  plain  fact. 

"  I  shall  draw  all  the  inferences  I  please,"  said  she,  "  es- 


THE  PRISONER  199 

pecially  if  they're  true.  And  you  needn't  try  to  mix  me 
up  by  your  law  terms,  for  I  don't  understand  them." 

"  I  have  been  particularly  careful  not  to,"  said  Choate 
rather  stiffly ;  but  still,  she  saw,  with  an  irritating  proffer 
of  compassion  for  her  because  she  didn't  know  any  better. 
66 1  am  being  very  unprofessional  indeed.  And  I  still  ad 
vise  you,  in  plain  language,  not  to  draw  that  sort  of  in 
ference  about  a  lady  — "  There  he  hesitated. 

"About  Esther?"  she  inquired  viciously. 

"  Yes,"  said  he  steadily,  "  about  Mrs.  Jeffrey  Blake. 
She  is  a  gentlewoman." 

So  Anne  had  said :  "  Esther  is  a  lady."  For  the  mo 
ment  Lydia  felt  more  imbued  with  the  impartiality  of  the 
law  than  both  of  them.  Esther's  being  a  lady  had,  she 
thought,  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  her  stealing  a  neck 
lace,  if  she  happened  to  like  necklaces.  She  considered 
herself  a  lady,  but  she  could  also  see  herself,  under  tempta 
tion,  doing  a  desperado's  deeds.  Not  stealing  a  necklace: 
that  was  tawdry  larceny.  But  she  could  see  herself  trap 
ping  Esther  in  a  still  place  and  cutting  her  dusky  hair 
off  so  that  she'd  betray  no  more  men.  For  she  began  to 
suspect  that  Alston  Choate,  too,  was  caught  in  the  lure 
of  Esther's  inexplicable  charm.  Lydia  was  at  the  moment 
of  girlhood  nearly  done  where  her  accumulated  experi 
ence,  half  of  it  not  understood,  was  prepared  to  spring  to 
life  and  crystallise  into  clearest  knowledge.  She  was  a 
child  still,  but  she  was  ready  to  be  a  woman.  Alston 
Choate  now  was  gazing  at  her  with  his  charming  smile,  and 
Lydia  hardened  under  it,  certain  the  smile  was  meant  for 
mere  persuasiveness. 

"  Besides,"  he  said,  "  the  necklace  wasn't  yours.  You 
don't  want  to  bring  Mrs.  Blake  to  book  for  stealing  a  neck 
lace  which  isn't  your  own?  " 


200  THE  PRISONER 

"  But  I'm  not  doing  it  for  myself,"  said  Lydia  instantly. 
"  It's  for  Jeffrey." 

"  But,  Jeffrey  — "  Alston  paused.  He  wanted  to  put 
it  with  as  little  offence  as  might  be.  "  Jeffrey  has  been 
tried  for  a  certain  offence  and  found  guilty." 

"  He  wasn't  really  guilty,"  said  Lydia.  "  Can't  you  see 
he  wasn't?  Esther  stole  the  necklace,  and  Madame  Beat- 
tie  wanted  it  paid  for,  and  Jeffrey  tried  to  do  it  and  every 
thing  went  to  pieces.  Can't  you  really  see?  " 

She  asked  it  anxiously,  and  Alston  answered  her  with  the 
more  gentleness  because  her  solicitude  made  her  so  kind 
and  fair. 

"  Now,"  said  he,  "  this  is  the  way  it  is.  Jeffrey  pleaded 
guilty  and  was  sentenced.  If  everything  you  say  is  true 
—  we'll  assume  it  is  —  he  would  have  been  tried  just  the 
same,  and  he  would  have  been  sentenced  just  the  same.  I 
don't  say  his  counsel  mightn't  have  whipped  up  a  lot  of 
sympathy  from  the  jury,  but  he  wouldn't  have  got  off  al 
together.  And  besides,  you  wouldn't  have  had  him  escape 
in  any  such  conceivable  way.  You  wouldn't  have  had  him 
shield  himself  behind  his  wife." 

Lydia  was  looking  at  him  with  brows  drawn  tight  in  her 
effort  to  get  quite  clearly  what  she  thought  might  prove  at 
any  instant  a  befogged  technicality.  But  it  all  sounded 
reasonable  enough,  and  she  gratefully  understood  he  was 
laying  aside  the  jurist's  phraseology  for  her  sake. 

"  But,"  said  she,  "  mightn't  Esther  have  been  tried  for 
stealing  the  necklace?  " 

He  couldn't  help  laughing,  she  seemed  so  ingenuously 
anxious  to  lay  Esther  by  the  heels.  Then  he  sobered,  for 
her  inhumanity  to  Esther  seemed  to  him  incredible. 

"  Why,  yes,"  said  he,  "  if  she  had  been  suspected,  if 
there'd  been  evidence  — " 

"  Then  I  call  it  a  wicked  shame  she  wasn't,"  said  Lydia. 


THE  PRISONER  201 

"  And  she's  got  to  be  now.  If  it  isn't  my  business,  it's 
Madame  Seattle's,  and  I'll  ask  her  to  do  it.  I'll  beg  it  of 
her." 

With  that  she  seemed  still  more  dangerous  to  him,  like 
an  explosive  put  up  in  so  seemly  a  package  that  at  first 
you  trust  it  until  you  see  how  impossible  it  is  to  handle. 
He  spoke  with  a  real  and  also  a  calculated  impressiveness. 

"  Miss  Lydia,  will  you  let  me  tell  you  something?  " 

She  nodded,  her  eyes  fixed  on  his. 

"  One  thing  my  profession  has  taught  me.  It's  so  abso 
lutely  true  a  thing  that  it  never  fails.  And  it's  this:  it 
is  very  easy  to  begin  a  course  of  proceeding,  but,  once 
begun,  it's  another  thing  to  stop  it.  Now  before  you  start 
this  ball  rolling  —  or  before  you  egg  on  Madame  Beattie 
—  let's  see  what  you're  going  to  get  out  of  it." 

"  I  don't  expect  to  get  anything,"  said  Lydia,  on  fire. 
"  I'm  not  doing  it  for  myself." 

"  Let's  take  the  other  people  then.  Your  father  is  a 
man  of  reputation.  He's  going  to  be  horrified.  Jeff  is 
going  to  be  broken-hearted  under  an  attack  upon  his 
wife." 

"  He  doesn't  love  her,"  said  Lydia  eagerly.  "  Not  one 
bit." 

Choate  himself  believed  that,  but  he  stared  briefly  at 
having  it  thrown  at  him  with  so  deft  a  touch.  Then  he 
went  on. 

"  Mrs.  Blake  is  going  to  be  found  not  guilty." 

"  Why  is  she  ?  "  asked  Lydia  calmly.  It  seemed  to  her 
the  cross-questioning  was  rightly  on  her  side. 

"  Why,  good  God !  because  she  isn't  guilty !  "  said  Als 
ton  with  violence,  and  did  not  even  remember  to  be  glad  no 
legal  brother  was  present  to  hear  so  irrational  an  ex 
plosion.  He  hurried  on  lest  she  should  call  satiric  atten 
tion  to  its  thinness.  "  And  as  for  Madam'e  Bba'ttie,  she'll 


202  THE  PRISONER 

get  nothing  out  of  it.  For  the  necklace  being  lost,  she 
won't  get  that." 

"  Oh,"  said  Lydia,  the  more  coolly,  as  she  noted  she  had 
nettled  him  on  the  human  side  until  the  legal  one  was  fairly 
hidden,  "  but  we  don't  think  the  necklace  is  lost." 

"  Who  don't?  "  he  asked,  frowning. 

"  Madame  Beattie  and  I." 

"  Where  do  you  think  it  is  then?  " 

"  We  think  Esther's  got  it  somewhere." 

"  But  you  say  she  lost  it." 

"  I  say  she  said  she  lost  it,"  returned  Lydia,  feeling  the 
delight  of  sounding  more  accurate  every  minute.  "  We 
don't  think  she  did  lose  it.  We  think  she  lied." 

Alston  Choate  remembered  Esther  as  he  had  lately  seen 
her,  sitting  in  her  harmonious  surroundings,  all  fragility 
of  body  and  sweetness  of  feeling,  begging  him  to  undertake 
the  case  that  would  deliver  her  from  Jeffrey  because  she 
was  afraid  —  afraid.  And  here  was  this  horribly  self- 
possessed  little  devil  —  he  called  her  a  little  devil  quite 
plainly  in  his  mind  —  accusing  that  flower  of  gentleness 
and  beauty  of  a  vulgar  crime. 

"  My  God !  "  said  he,  under  his  breath. 

And  at  that  instant  Anne,  flushed  and  most  sweet,  hatted 
and  gloved,  opened  the  door  and  walked  in.  She  bowed  to 
Alston  Choate,  though  she  did  not  take  his  outstretched 
hand.  He  was  receiving  such  professional  insult,  Anne 
felt,  from  one  of  her  kin  that  she  could  scarcely  expect 
from  him  the  further  grace  of  shaking  hands  with  her. 
Lydia,  looking  at  her,  saw  with  an  impish  glee  that  Anne, 
the  irreproachable,  was  angry.  There  was  the  spark  in 
her  eye,  decision  in  the  gesture  with  which  she  made  at  once 
for  Lydia. 

"  Why,  Anne,"  said  Lydia,  "  I  never  saw  you  mad  be 
fore." 


THE  PRISONER  203 

Tears  came  into  Anne's  eyes.  She  bit  her  lip.  All 
the  proprieties  of  life  seemed  to  her  at  stake  when  she  must 
stand  here  before  this  most  dignified  of  men  and  hear  Lydia 
turn  Addington  courtesies  into  farce. 

"  I  came  to  get  you,"  she  said,  to  Lydia.  "  You  must 
come  home  with  me." 

"  I  can't,"  said  Lydia.  "  I  am  having  a  business  talk 
with  Mr.  Choate.  I've  asked  him  to  undertake  our  case." 

"  Our  case,"  Anne  repeated,  in  a  perfect  despair. 
"  Why,  we  haven't  any  case." 

She  turned  to  Choate  and  he  gave  her  a  confirming 
glance. 

"  I've  been  telling  your  sister  that,  virtually,"  said  he. 
"  I  tell  her  she  doesn't  need  my  services.  You  may  per 
suade  her." 

"  Well,"  said  Lydia  cheerfully,  rising,  for  they  seemed 
to  her  much  older  than  she  and,  though  not  to  be  obeyed  on 
that  account,  to  be  placated  by  outward  civilities,  "  I'm 
sorry.  But  if  you  don't  take  the  case  I  shall  have  to  go 
to  some  one  else." 

"  Lydia !  "  said  Anne.  Was  this  the  soft  creature  who 
crept  to  her  arms  of  a  cold  night  and  who  prettily  had 
danced  her  way  into  public  favour? 

Alston  Choate  was  looking  thoughtful.  It  was  not  a 
story  to  be  spread  broadcast  over  Addington.  He  tem 
porised. 

"  You  see,"  he  ventured,  turning  again  to  Lydia  with 
his  delightful  smile  which  was,  with  no  forethought  of  his 
own,  tremendously  persuasive,  "  you  haven't  told  me  yet 
what  anybody  is  to  get  out  of  it." 

"  I  thought  I  had,"  said  Lydia,  taking  heart  once  more. 
If  he  talked  reasonably  with  her,  perhaps  she  could  per 
suade  him  after  all.  "Why,  don't  you  see?  it's  just  as 
easy !  I  do,  and  I've  only  thought  of  it  one  night.  Don't 


204  THE  PRISONER 

you  see,  Madame  Seattle's  here  to  hound  Jeffrey  into  pay 
ing  her  for  the  necklace.  That's  going  to  kill  him,  just 
kill  him.  Anne,  I  should  think  you  could  see  that." 

Anne  could  see  it  if  it  were  so.  But  Lydia,  she  thought, 
was  building  on  a  dream.  The  hideous  old  woman  with  the 
ostrich  feathers  had  played  a  satiric  joke  on  her,  and  here 
was  Lydia  in  good  faith  assuming  the  joke  was  real. 

"  And  if  we  can  get  this  cleared  up,"  said  Lydia  calmly, 
feeling  very  mature  as  she  scanned  their  troubled  faces, 
"  Madame  Beattie  can  just  have  her  necklace  back,  and 
Jeff,  instead  of  thinking  he's  got  to  start  out  with  that 
tied  round  his  neck,  can  set  to  work  and  pay  his  creditors." 

Alston  Choate  was  looking  at  her,  frowning. 

"  Do  you  realise,  Miss  Lydia,  what  amount  it  is  Jeffrey 
would  have  to  pay  his  creditors  ?  Unless  he  went  into  the 
market  again  and  had  a  run  of  unbroken  luck  —  and  he's 
no  capital  to  begin  on  —  it's  a  thing  he  simply  couldn't 
do.  And  as  to  the  market,  God  forbid  that  he  should  ever 
think  of  it." 

"  Yes,"  said  Anne  fervently,  "  God  forbid  that.  Farvie 
can't  say  enough  against  it." 

Lydia's  perfectly  concrete  faith  was  not  impaired  in  the 
least. 

"  It  isn't  to  be  expected  he  should  pay  it  all,"  said  she. 
"  He's  got  to  pay  what  he  can.  If  he  should  die  to-mor 
row  with  ten  dollars  saved  toward  paying  back  his 
debts  — " 

"  Do  you  happen  to  know  what  sum  of  money  represents 
his  debts  ?  "  Alston  threw  in,  as  you  would  clutch  at  the 
bit  of  a  runaway  horse. 

"  I  know  all  about  it,"  said  Lydia.  She  suddenly  looked 
hot  and  fierce.  "  I've  done  sums  with  it  over  and  over,  to 
see  if  he  could  afford  to  pay  the  interest  too.  And  it's  so 
much  it  doesn't  mean  anything  at  all  to  me  one  minute,  and 


THE  PRISONER  205 

another  time  I  wake  up  at  night  and  feel  it  sitting  on  me, 
j  amming  me  flat.  But  you  needn't  think  I'm  going  to  stop 
for  that.  And  if  you  won't  be  my  lawyer  I  can  find  some 
body  that  will.  That  Mr.  Moore  is  a  lawyer.  I'll  go  to 
him." 

Anne,  who  had  been  staring  at  Lydia  with  the  air  of 
never  having  truly  seen  her,  turned  upon  Choate,  her  beau 
tiful  eyes  distended  in  a  tragical  appeal. 

"  Oh,'*  said  she,  "  you'll  have  to  help  us  somehow." 

So  Alston  Choate  thought.  He  was  regarding  Lydia, 
and  he  spoke  with  a  deference  she  was  glad  to  welcome, 
a  prospective  client's  due. 

"  I  think,"  said  he,  "  you  had  better  leave  the  case  with 
me." 

"  Yes,"  said  Lydia.  She  hoped  to  get  out  of  the  room 
before  Anne  saw  how  undone  she  really  was.  "  That's 
nice.  You  think  it  over,  and  we'll  have  another  talk. 
Come  along,  Anne.  Mary  Nellen  wants  some  lemons." 


XVIII 

What  Alston  Choate  did,  after  ten  minutes'  frowning 
thought,  was  to  sit  down  and  write  a  note  to  Madame 
Beattie.  But  as  he  dipped  his  pen  he  said  aloud,  half 
admiring  and  inconceivably  irritated :  "  The  little  devil !  " 
He  sent  the  note  to  Madame  Beattie  by  a  boy  charged  to 
give  it,  if  possible,  into  her  hand,  and  in  an  hour  she  was 
there  in  his  office,  ostrich  plumes  and  all.  She  was  in 
high  feather,  not  adequately  to  be  expressed  by  the  plumes, 
and  at  once  she  told  him  why. 

"  I  believe  that  little  wild-fire's  been  here  to  see  you  al 
ready.  Has  she  ?  and  talking  about  necklaces  ?  " 

Madame  Beattie  was  sitting  upright  in  the  office  chair, 
fanning  herself  and  regarding  him  with  a  smile  as  sym 
pathetic  as  if  she  had  been  the  cause  of  no  disturbing  issue. 

"  You'll  pardon  me  for  asking  you  to  come  here,"  said 
Alston.  "  But  I  didn't  know  how  to  get  at  you  without 
Mrs.  Blake's  knowledge." 

"  Of  course,"  said  Madame  Beattie  composedly.  "  She 
was  there  when  the  note  came,  and  curious  as  a  cat." 

"  I  see,"  said  Alston,  tapping  noiselessly  with  his  help 
ful  paper  knife,  "  that  you  guess  I've  heard  some  rumours 
that  —  pardon  me,  Madame  Beattie  —  started  from  you." 

"  Yes,"  said  she,  "  that  pretty  imp  has  been  here.  Quite 
right.  She's  a  clever  child.  Let  her  stir  up  something, 
and  they  may  quiet  it  if  they  can." 

"  Do  you  mind  telling  me,"  said  Alston,  "  what  this 
story  is  —  about  a  necklace  ?  " 

"  I've  no  doubt  she's  told  you  just  as  well  as  I  could," 

206 


THE  PRISONER  207 

said  Madame  Beattie.  "  She  sat  and  drank  it  all  in.  I 
bet  te*i  pounds  she  remembered  word  for  word." 

"  As  I  understand,  you  say  — " 

"  Don't  tell  me  I  *  say.'  I  had  a  necklace  worth  more 
money  than  I  dared  tell  that  imp.  She  wouldn't  have  be 
lieved  me.  And  my  niece  Esther  is  as  fond  of  baubles  as 
I  am.  She  stole  the  thing.  And  she  said  she  lost  it. 
And  it's  my  opinion  —  and  it's  the  imp's  opinion  —  she's 
got  it  somewhere  now." 

Alston  tapped  noiselessly,  and  regarded  her  from  un 
der  brows  judicially  stern.  He  wished  he  knew  recipes 
for  frightening  Madame  Beattie.  But,  he  suspected,  there 
weren't  any.  She  would  tell  the  truth  or  she  would  not, 
as  she  preferred.  He  hadn't  any  delusions  about  Madame 
Seattle's  cherishing  truth  as  an  abstract  duty.  She  was 
after  results.  He  made  a  thrust  at  random. 

"  I  can't  see  your  object  in  stirring  up  this  matter. 
If  you  had  any  ground  of  evidence  you'd  have  made  your 
claim  and  had  it  settled  long  ago." 

"  Not  fully,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  fanning. 

"  Then  you  were  paid  something?  " 

"Something?  How  far  do  you  think  'something' 
would  go  toward  paying  for  the  loss  of  a  diamond  neck 
lace?  Evidently  you  don't  know  the  history  of  that  neck 
lace.  If  you  were  an  older  man  you  would.  The  papers 
were  full  of  it  for  years.  It  nearly  caused  a  royal  separa 
tion  —  they  were  reconciled  after  —  and  I  was  nearly  gar- 
roted  once  when  the  thieves  thought  I  had  it  in  a  hand 
bag.  There  are  historic  necklaces  and  this  is  one.  Did 
you  ever  hear  of  Marie  Antoinette's  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Alston  absently.  He  was  thinking  how  to 
get  at  her  in  the  house  where  she  lived.  How  would  some 
of  his  novelists  have  written  out  Madame  Beattie  and  made 
her  talk?  "And  Maupassant's."  This  he  said  ruminat- 


208  THE  PRISONER 

ingly,  but  the  lawyer  in  him  here  put  down  a  mark. 
"  Note,"  said  the  mark,  "  Maupassant's  necklace.  She 
rose  to  that."  There  was  no  doubt  of  it.  A  quick  cross- 
light,  like  a  shiver,  had  run  across  her  eyes.  "  You  know 
Maupassant's  story,"  he  pursued. 

"  I  know  every  word  of  Maupassant.     Neat,  very  neat." 

"  You  remember  the  wife  lost  the  borrowed  necklace, 
and  she  and  her  husband  ruined  themselves  to  pay  for  it, 
and  then  they  found  it  wasn't  diamonds  at  all,  but  paste." 

"  I  remember,"  said  Madame  Beattie  composedly. 
"  But  if  it  had  been  a  necklace  such  as  mine  an  imitation 
would  have  cost  a  pretty  penny." 

"  So  it  wasn't  the  necklace  itself,"  he  hazarded.  "  You 
wouldn't  have  brought  a  priceless  thing  over  here.  It  was 
the  imitation." 

Madame  Beattie  broke  out,  a  shrill  staccato,  into  some 
thing  like  anger.  But  it  might  not  have  been  anger,  he 
knew,  only  a  means  of  hostile  communication. 

"  You  are  a  rude  young  man  to  put  words  into  my 
mouth,  a  rude  young  man." 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  Alston.  "  But  this  is  rather 
a  serious  matter.  And  I  do  want  to  know,  as  a  friend 
of  Mrs.  Jeffrey  Blake." 

"  And  counsel  confided  in  by  that  imp,"  she  supplied 
shrewdly. 

"  Yes,  counsel  retained  by  Miss  Lydia  French.  I  want 
to  know  whether  you  had  with  you  here  in  America  the 
necklace  given  you  by  — "  Here  he  hesitated.  He  won 
dered  whether,  according  to  her  standards,  he  was  unbear 
ably  insulting,  or  whether  the  names  of  royal  givers  could 
really  be  mentioned. 

"  A  certain  Royal  Personage,"  said  Madame  Beattie 
calmly. 

"  Or,"    said   Alston,    beginning    after    a    safe    hiatus, 


THE  PRISONER  209 

"  whether  you  had  had  an  imitation  made,  and  whether  the 
necklace  said  to  be  lost  was  the  imitation." 

"  Well,  then  I'll  tell  you  plainly,"  said  Madame  Beattie, 
in  a  cheerful  concession,  "  I  didn't  have  an  imitation  made. 
And  you're  quite  within  the  truth  with  your  silly  '  said  to 
he's.'  For  it  was  said  to  be  lost.  Esther  said  it.  And 
she  no  more  lost  it  than  she  went  to  New  York  that  time 
to  climb  the  Matterhorn.  Do  you  know  Esther?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Alston  with  a  calculated  dignity,  "  I  know 
her  very  well." 

"  Oh,  I  mean  really  know  her,  not  enough  to  take  her  in 
to  dinner  or  snatch  your  hat  off  to  her." 

"  Yes,  I  really  know  her." 

"  Then  why  should  you  assume  she's  not  a  liar? " 
Madame  Beattie  asked  this  with  the  utmost  tranquillity. 
It  almost  robbed  the  insult  of  offence.  But  Alston's  face 
arrested  her,  and  she  burst  out  laughing.  "My  dear 
boy,"  said  she,  "  you  deal  with  evidence  and  you  don't 
know  a  liar  when  you  see  her.  Esther  isn't  all  kinds  of 
a  liar.  She  isn't  an  amusing  one,  for  instance.  She 
hasn't  any  imagination.  Now  if  I  thought  it  would  make 
you  jump,  I  should  tell  you  there  was  a  tiger  sitting  on 
the  top  of  that  bookcase.  I  should  do  it  because  it  would 
amuse  me.  But  Esther  never'd  think  of  such  a  thing." 
She  was  talking  to  him  now  with  perfect  good-humour  be 
cause  he  actually  had  glanced  up  at  the  bookcase,  and  it 
was  tribute  to  her  dramatic  art.  "  She  tells  only  the  lies 
she  has  to.  Esther's  the  perfect  female  animal  hiding  un 
der  things  when  there's  something  she's  afraid  of  in  the 
open  and  then  telling  herself  she  hid  because  she  felt  like 
being  alone.  The  little  imp  wouldn't  do  that,"  said  Ma 
dame  Beattie  admiringly.  "  She  wouldn't  be  afraid  of 
anything,  or  if  she  was  she'd  fight  the  harder.  I  shouldn't 
want  to  see  the  blood  she'd  draw." 


210  THE  PRISONER 

Alston  was  looking  at  her  in  a  fixed  distaste. 

"  Esther  is  your  niece,"  he  began. 

"  Grandniece,"  interrupted  Madame  Beattie. 

"  She's  of  your  blood.  And  at  present  you  are  her 
guest  — " 

"  Oh,  no,  I'm  not.  The  house  is  Susan's.  Susan  and  I 
are  step-sisters.  Half  the  house  ought  to  have  been  left 
to  me,  only  Grandfather  Pike  knew  I  was  worshipped, 
simply  worshipped  in  Paris,  and  he  wrote  me  something 
scriptural  about  Babylon." 

"  At  any  rate,"  said  Alston,  "  you  are  technically  visit 
ing  your  niece,  and  you  come  here  and  tell  me  she  is  a  thief 
and  a  liar." 

"  You  sent  for  me,"  said  Madame  Beattie  equably. 
"  And  I  actually  walked  over.  I  thought  it  would  be  good 
for  me,  but  it  wasn't.  Isn't  that  a  hack  out  there?  If 
it's  that  Denny,  I  think  I'll  get  him  to  take  me  for  a  little 
drive.  Don't  come  down." 

But  Alston  went  in  a  silence  he  recognised  as  sulky,  and 
put  her  into  the  carriage  with  a  perfect  solicitude. 

"  I  must  ask  you,"  he  said  stiffly  before  he  closed  the 
carriage  door,  "  not  to  mention  this  to  Mrs.  Blake." 

"  Bless  you,  no,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "  I'm  going  to 
let  you  stir  the  pot,  you  and  that  imp.  Tell  him  to  drive 
out  into  the  country  somewhere  for  half  an  hour.  I  sup 
pose  I've  got  to  get  the  air." 

But  he  was  not  to  escape  that  particular  coil  so  soon. 
Back  in  his  office  again,  giving  himself  another  ten  minutes 
of  grave  amused  consideration,  before  he  called  the  stenog 
rapher,  he  looked  up,  at  the  opening  of  the  door,  and  saw 
Anne.  She  came  forward  at  once  and  without  closing  the 
door,  as  if  to  assure  him  she  would  not  keep  him  long. 
There  was  no  misreading  the  grave  trouble  of  her  face. 
He  met  her,  and  now  they  shook  hands,  and  after  he  had 


THE  PRISONER  211 

closed  the  door  he  set  a  chair  for  her.  But  Anne  refused 
it. 

"  I  came  to  tell  you  how  sorry  I  am  to  have  troubled  you 
so,"  she  began.  "  Of  course  Lydia  won't  go  on  with  this. 
She  won't  be  allowed  to.  I  don't  know  what  could  stop 
her,"  Anne  admitted  truthfully.  "  But  I  shall  do  what  I 
can.  Farvie  mustn't  be  told.  He'd  be  horrified.  Nor 
Jeff.  I  must  see  what  I  can  do." 

"You  are  very  much  troubled,"  said  Alston,  in  a  tone 
of  grave  concern.  It  seemed  to  him  Anne  was  a  perfect 
type  of  the  gentlewoman  of  another  time,  not  even  of  his 
mother's  perhaps,  but  of  his  grandmother's  when  ladies 
were  a  mixture  of  fine  courage  and  delicate  reserve.  That 
type  had,  in  his  earliest  youth,  seemed  inevitable.  If  his 
mother  had  escaped  from  it,  it  was  because  she  was  the  in 
explicable  wonder  of  womankind,  unlike  the  rest  and  rarer 
than  all  together. 

Anne  looked  at  him,  pleading  in  her  eyes. 

"  Terribly,"  she  said,  "  terribly  troubled.  Lydia  has 
always  been  impulsive,  but  not  unmanageable.  And  I 
don't  in  the  least  know  what  to  do." 

"  Suppose  you  leave  it  with  me,"  said  Alston,  his  defer 
ence  an  exquisite  balm  to  her  hurt  feeling.  Then  he 
smiled,  remembering  Lydia.  "  I  don't  know  what  to  do 
either,"  he  said.  "  Your  sister's  rather  terrifying.  But 
I  think  we're  safe  enough  so  long  as  she  doesn't  go  to  Wee- 
don  Moore." 

Anne  was  wordlessly  grateful,  but  he  understood  her 
and  not  only  went  to  the  door  with  her  but  down  the  stairs 
as  well.  And  she  walked  home  treasuring  the  memory  of 
his  smile. 


XIX 

The  day  Jeffrey  began  to  spade  up  the  ground  he  knew 
he  had  got  hold  of  something  bigger  than  the  handle  of  the 
spade.  It  was  something  rudely  beneficent,  because  it 
kept  him  thinking  about  his  body  and  the  best  way  to  use 
it,  and  it  sent  him  to  bed  so  tired  he  lay  there  aching. 
Not  aching  for  long  though:  now  he  could  sleep.  That 
seemed  to  him  the  only  use  he  could  put  himself  to:  he 
could  work  hard  enough  to  forget  he  had  much  of  an 
identity  except  this  physical  one.  He  had  not  expected 
to  escape  that  horrible  waking  time  between  three  and  four 
in  the  morning  when  he  had  seen  his  life  as  an  ignorant 
waste  of  youth  and  power.  It  was  indeed  confusion, 
nothing  but  that:  the  confusion  of  overwhelming  love  for 
Esther,  of  a  bravado  of  display  when  he  made  money  for 
them  both  to  spend,  of  the  arrogant  sense  that  there  was 
always  time  enough,  strength  enough,  sheer  brilliant  in 
sight  enough  to  dance  with  life  and  drink  with  it  and  then 
have  abundance  of  everything  left.  And  suddenly  the 
clock  had  struck,  the  rout  was  over  and  there  was  nothing 
left.  It  had  all  been  forfeit.  He  hardly  knew  how  he  had 
come  out  of  prison  so  drained  of  courage  when  he  had  been 
so  roistering  with  it  before  he  went  in.  Sometimes  he  had 
thought,  at  three  o'clock  in  the  morning,  that  it  was  Esther 
who  had  drained  him:  she,  sweet,  helpless,  delicate  flower 
of  life.  She  had  not  merely  been  swayed  by  the  wind  that 
worsted  him.  She  had  perhaps  been  broken  by  it.  Or  at 
least  it  had  done  something  inexplicable  which  he,  entirely 
out  of  communication  with  her,  had  not  been  able  to  under 
stand.  And  he  had  come  back  to  find  her  more  lovely  than 

212 


THE  PRISONER  213 

ever,  and  wearing  no  mark  of  the  inner  cruelties  he  had  suf 
fered  and  had  imagined  she  must  share  with  him. 

He  believed  that  his  stay  in  prison  had  given  him  an 
illuminating  idea  of  what  hell  really  is :  the  vision  of  heaven 
and  a  certainty  of  the  closed  door.  Confronted  with  an 
existence  pared  down  to  the  satisfying  of  its  necessities, 
he  had  loathed  the  idea  of  luxury  while  he  hated  the  daily 
meagreness.  Life  had  stopped  for  him  when  he  entered 
inexorable  bounds.  It  could  not,  he  knew,  be  set  going. 
Some  clocks  have  merely  stopped.  Others  are  smashed. 
It  had  been  the  only  satisfaction  of  his  craving  instincts 
to  build  up  a  scheme  of  conduct  for  the  prison  paper :  but 
it  had  been  the  vision  of  a  man  lost  to  the  country  of  his 
dreams  and  destined  to  eternal  exile.  Now  all  these  aches 
and  agonies  of  the  past  were  lulled  by  the  surge  of  tired 
muscles.  He  worked  like  a  fury  and  the  colonel,  accord 
ing  to  his  strength,  worked  with  him.  They  talked  little, 
and  chiefly  about  the  weather  prospects  and  the  ways  of 
the  earth.  Sometimes  Anne  would  appear,  and  gently 
draw  the  colonel  in,  to  advise  her  about  something,  and 
being  in,  he  was  persuaded  to  an  egg-nog  or  a  nap.  But 
he  also  was  absorbed,  she  saw,  though  he  went  at  a  slower 
pace  than  Jeff.  He  who  had  been  old  seemed  to  be  in 
physical  revolt ;  he  was  not  sitting  down  to  wait  for  death. 
He  was  going  to  dig  the  ground,  even  if  he  dug  his  grave, 
and  not  look  up  to  see  what  visitant  was  waiting  for  him. 
It  might  be  the  earthly  angel  of  a  renewed  and  sturdy  life. 
It  might  be  the  last  summoner.  But  death,  he  told  him 
self  stoutly,  though  in  a  timorous  bravado,  waited  for  all. 

Jeffrey's  manuscript  was  laid  aside.  On  Sundays  he 
was  too  tired  to  write,  too  sleepy  at  night.  For  Lydia 
and  Anne,  it  was,  so  far  as  family  life  went,  a  time  of  ar 
rested  intercourse.  Their  men  were  planting  and  could 
not  talk  to  them,  or  tired  and  could  not  talk  then.  The 


THE  PRISONER 

colonel  had  even  given  up  pulling  out  classical  snags  for 
Mary  Nellen.  He  would  do  it  in  the  evening,  he  said ;  but 
every  evening  he  was  asleep.  Lydia  had  developed  an 
astounding  intimacy  with  Madame  Beattie,  and  Anne  was 
troubled.  She  told  Alston  Choate,  who  came  when  he 
thought  there  was  a  chance  of  seeing  her  alone,  because 
he  was  whole-heartedly  sorry  for  her,  at  the  mercy  of  the 
vagaries  of  the  little  devil,  as  he  permitted  himself  to  call 
Lydia  in  his  own  mind. 

"  Madame  Beattie,"  Anne  said,  "  isn't  a  fit  companion 
for  a  young  girl.  She  can't  be." 

Alston  remembered  the  expression  of  satiric  good- 
humour  on  Madame  Beattie's  face,  and  was  not  prepared 
wholly  to  condemn  her.  He  thought  she  could  be  a  good 
fellow  by  habit  without  much  trying,  and  he  was  very  sure 
that,  with  a  girl,  she  would  play  fair.  But  if  he  had  heard 
Madame  Beattie  this  morning  in  June,  as  she  took  Lydia 
to  drive,  he  might  not  have  felt  so  assured.  These  drives 
had  become  a  matter  of  custom  now.  At  first,  Madame 
Beattie  had  taken  Denny  and  an  ancient  victoria,  but  she 
tired  of  that. 

"  The  man's  as  curious  as  a  cat,"  she  said  to  Lydia. 
"  He  can  move  his  ears.     That's  to  hear  better.     Didn't 
you  see  him  cock  them  round  at  us?     Can  you  drive?" 
"  Yes,  Madame  Beattie,"  said  Lydia.     "  I  love  to." 
"  Then  we'll  have  a  phaeton,  and  you  shall  drive." 
Nobody  knew  there  was  a  phaeton  left  in  Addington. 
But  nobody  had  known  there  was  a  victoria,  and  when 
Madame  Beattie  had  set  her  mind  upon  each,  it  was  in  due 
course  forthcoming,  vehicles  apparently  of  an  equal  age 
and  the  same  extent  of  disrepair.     So  they  set  forth  to 
gether,  the  strange  couple,  and  jogged,  as  Madame  Beattie 
said.     She  would  send  the  unwilling  Sophy,  who  had  a 
theory  that  she  was  to  serve  Esther  and  nobody  else,  and 


THE  PRISONER  215 

that  scantily,  over  with  a  note.  The  Blake  house  had  no 
telephone.  Jeff,  for  unformulated  reasons,  owned  to  a 
nervous  distaste  for  being  summoned.  And  the  note  would 
say: 

"  Do  you  want  to  jog?  " 

Lydia  always  wanted  to,  and  she  found  it  the  more  en 
gaging  because  Madame  Beattie  told  her  it  drove  Esther 
to  madness  and  despair. 

"  She's  furious,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  with  her  lisp. 
"  It's  very  silly  of  her.  She  doesn't  want  to  go  with  me 
herself.  Not  that  I'd  have  her.  But  you  are  an  imp,  my 
dear,  and  I  like  you." 

This  warm  morning,  full  of  sun  and  birds,  they  were 
jogging  up  Haldon  Hill,  a  way  they  took  often  because 
it  only  led  down  again  and  motorists  avoided  it.  Madame 
Beattie,  still  thickly  clad  and  nodded  over  by  plumes, 
lounged  and  held  her  parasol  with  the  air  of  ladies  in  the 
Bois.  Lydia,  sitting  erect  and  hatless,  looked  straight 
ahead,  though  the  reins  were  loose,  anxiously  piercing  some 
obscurity  if  she  might,  but  always  a  mental  one.  Her 
legal  affairs  were  stock  still.  Alston  Choate  talked  with 
her  cordially,  though  gravely,  about  her  case,  dissuading 
her  always,  but  she  was  perfectly  aware  he  was  doing  noth 
ing.  When  she  taxed  him  with  it,  he  reminded  her  that 
he  had  told  her  there  was  nothing  to  do.  But  he  assured 
her  everything  would  be  attempted  to  save  her  father  and 
Anne  from  anxiety,  and  incidentally  herself.  About  this 
Madame  Beattie  was  asking  her  now,  as  they  jogged  under 
the  flicker  of  leaves. 

"  What  has  that  young  man  done  for  you,  my  dear, 
young  Choate?  " 

"  Nothing,"  said  Lydia. 

She  put  her  lips  together  and  thought  what  she  would 
do  if  she  were  Jeff. 


216  THE  PRISONER 

"  But  isn't  he  agitating  anything?  " 

"  Agitating?  " 

"Yes.  That's  what  he  must  do,  you  know.  That's 
all  he  can  do." 

Lydia  turned  reproachful  eyes  upon  her. 

"  You  think  so,  too,"  she  said. 

"  Why,  yes,  dear  imp,  I  know  it.  Jeff's  case  is  ancient 
history.  We  can't  do  anything  practical  about  it,  so 
what  we  want  is  to  agitate  —  agitate  —  until  he  leaves 
his  absurd  plaything  —  carrots,  is  it,  or  summer  squash? 
—  and  gets  into  business  in  a  civilised  way.  The  man's 
a  genius,  if  only  his  mind  wakes  up.  Let  him  think  we're 
going  to  spread  the  necklace  story  far  and  wide,  let  him 
see  Esther  about  to  be  hauled  before  public  opinion  —  " 

"  He  doesn't  love  Esther,"  said  Lydia,  and  then  sav 
agely  bit  her  lip. 

"  Don't  you  believe  it,"  said  Madame  Beattie  sagely. 
"  She's  only  to  crook  her  finger.  Agitate.  Why,  I'll  do 
it  myself.  There's  that  dirty  little  man  that  wants  an 
interview  for  his  paper.  I'll  give  him  one." 

"  Weedon  Moore?  "  asked  Lydia.  "  Anne  won't  let  me 
know  him." 

"  Well,  you  do  know  him,  don't  you?  " 

"  I  saw  him  once.  But  when  I  threaten  to  take  Jeff's 
case  to  him,  if  Mr.  Choate  won't  stir  himself,  Anne  says  I 
sha'n't  even  speak  to  him.  He  isn't  nice,  she  thinks.  I 
don't  know  who  told  her." 

"  Choate,  my  dear,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "  He's 
afraid  Moore  will  get  hold  of  you.  He's  blocking  your 
game,  that's  all." 

Madame  Beattie,  the  next  day,  did  go  to  Weedon 
Moore's  office.  He  was  unprepared  for  her  and  so  the 
more  agonisingly  impressed.  Here  was  a  rough-spoken 
lady  who,  he  understood,  was  something  like  a  princess  in 


THE  PRISONER  217 

other  countries,  and  she  was  offering  him  an  interview. 

Madame  Beattie  showed  she  had  the  formula,  and  could 
manage  quite  well  alone. 

"  The  point  is  the  necklace,"  said  she,  sitting  straight 
and  fanning  herself,  regarding  him  with  so  direct  a  gaze 
that  he  pressed  his  knees  in  nervous  spasms.  "  You  don't 
need  to  ask  me  how  old  I  am  nor  whether  I  like  this 
country.  The  facts  are  that  I  was  given  a  very  valuable 
necklace  —  by  a  Royal  Personage.  Bless  you,  man! 
aren't  you  going  to  take  it  down?  " 

"  Yes,  yes,"  stammered  Moore.     "  I  beg  your  pardon." 

He  got  block  and  pencil,  and  though  the  attitude  of 
writing  relieved  him  from  the  necessity  of  looking  at  her, 
he  felt  the  sweat  break  out  on  his  forehead  and  knew  how 
it  was  dampening  his  flat  hair. 

"  The  necklace,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  "  became  famous. 
I  wore  it  just  enough  to  give  everybody  a  chance  to  won 
der  whether  I  was  to  wear  it  or  not.  The  papers  would 
say,  *  Madame  Beattie  wore  the  famous  necklace.' ' 

"  Am  I  permitted  to  say  —  "  Weedon  began,  and  then 
wondered  how  he  could  proceed. 

"  You  can  say  anything  I  do,"  said  Madame  Beattie 
promptly.  "  No  more.  Of  course  not  anything  else. 
What  is  it  you  want  to  say?  " 

Weedon  dropped  the  pencil,  and  under  the  table  began 
to  squeeze  inspiration  from  his  knees. 

"  Am  I  permitted,"  he  continued,  aghast  at  the  liberty 
he  was  taking,  "  to  know  the  name  of  the  giver?  " 

"  Certainly  not,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  but  without 
offence.  "  I  told  you  a  Royal  Personage.  Besides,  every 
body  knows.  If  your  people  here  don't,  it's  because 
thejr're  provincial  and  it  doesn't  matter  whether  they  know 
it  or  not.  I  will  continue.  The  necklace,  I  told  you,  be- 
came  almost  a§  famous,  $3  J.  Then  there  was  trouble," 


218  THE  PRISONER 

"  When?  "  ventured  Weedon. 

66  Oh,  a  long  time  after,  a  very  long  time.  The  Royal 
Personage  was  going  to  be  married  and  her  Royal  High 
ness  —  " 

"  Her  Royal  Highness?  " 

"  Of  course.  Do  you  suppose  he  would  have  been  al 
lowed  to  marry  a  commoner?  That  was  always  the  point. 
She  made  a  row,  very  properly.  The  necklace  was  famous 
and  some  of  the  gems  in  it  are  historic.  She  was  a 
thrifty  person.  I  don't  blame  her  for  it.  She  wasn't 
going  to  see  historic  jewels  drift  back  to  the  rue  de  la  Paix. 
So  they  made  me  a  proposition." 

Moore  was  forgetting  to  be  shy.  He  licked  his  lips, 
the  story  promised  so  enticingly. 

"  As  I  say,"  Madame  Beattie  pursued,  "  they  made  me 
a  proposition."  She  stopped  and  Moore,  pencil  poised, 
looked  at  her  inquiringly.  She  closed  her  fan,  with  a  de 
cisive  snap,  and  rose.  "  There,"  said  she,  "  you  can  elab 
orate  that.  Make  it  as  long  as  you  please,  and  it'll  do 
for  one  issue." 

Weedon  felt  as  if  somehow  he  had  been  done. 

"  But  you  haven't  told  me  anything,"  he  implored. 
"  Everybody  knows  as  much  as  that." 

"  I  reminded  you  of  that,"  said  Madame  Beattie. 
"  But  I  know  several  things  everybody  doesn't  know. 
Now  you  do  as  I  tell  you.  Head  it :  '  The  True  Story  of 
Patricia  Beattie's  Necklace.  First  Instalment.'  And 
you'll  sell  a  paper  to  every  man,  woman  and  baby  in  this 
ridiculous  town.  And  when  the  next  day's  paper  doesn't 
have  the  second  instalment,  they'll  buy  the  next  and  the 
next  to  see  if  it's  there." 

"  But  I  must  have  the  whole  in  hand,"  pleaded  Weedon. 

"  Well,  you  can't.  Because  I  sha'n't  give  it  to  you. 
Not  till  I'm  ready.  You  can  publish  a  paragraph  from 


THE  PRISONER  219 

time  to  time :  '  Madame  Beattie  under  the  strain  of  recol 
lection  unable  to  continue  her  reminiscences.  Madame 
Beattie  overcome  by  her  return  to  the  past.'  I'm  a  better 
journalist  than  you  are." 

"I'm  not  a  journalist,"  Weedon  ventured.  "I  prac 
tise  law." 

"  Well,  you  run  the  paper,  don't  you  ?  I'm  going  now. 
Good-bye." 

And  so  imbued  was  he  with  the  unassailable  character  of 
her  right  to  dictate,  that  he  did  publish  the  fragment,  and 
Addington  bought  it  breathlessly  and  looked  its  amused 
horror  over  the  values  of  the  foreign  visitor. 

"  Of  course,  my  dear,"  said  the  older  ladies  —  they 
called  each  other  "  my  dear  "  a  great  deal,  not  as  a  term 
of  affection,  but  in  moments  of  conviction  and  the  desire 
to  impress  it  — "  of  course  her  standards  are  not  ours. 
Nobody  would  expect  that.  But  this  is  certainly  going 
too  far.  Esther  must  be  very  much  mortified." 

Esther  was  not  only  that:  she  was  tearful  with  anger 
and  even  penetrated  to  her  grandmother's  room  to  rehearse 
the  circumstance,  and  beg  Madam  Bell  to  send  Aunt  Pa 
tricia  away.  Madam  Bell  was  lying  with  her  face  turned 
to  the  wall,  but  the  bedclothes  briefly  shook,  as  if  she 
chuckled. 

"  You  must  tell  her  to  go,"  said  Esther  again.  "  It's 
your  house,  and  it's  a  scandal  to  have  such  a  woman  living 
in  it.  I  don't  care  for  myself,  but  I  do  care  for  the  dig 
nity  of  the  family."  Esther,  Madam  Bell  knew,  never 
cared  for  herself.  She  did  things  from  the  highest  mo 
tives  and  the  most  remote.  "  Will  you,"  Esther  insisted, 
"  will  you  tell  her  to  leave  ?  " 

"  No,"  said  grandmother,  from  under  the  bedclothes. 
"  Go  away  and  call  Rhoda  Knox." 

Esther  went,  angry  but  not  disconcerted.     The  result 


220  THE  PRISONER 

of  her  invasion  was  perhaps  no  more  bitter  than  she  had 
expected.  She  had  sometimes  talked  to  grandmother  for 
ten  minutes,  meltingly,  adjuringly,  only  to  be  asked,  at  a 
pause,  to  call  Rhoda  Knox.  To-day  Rhoda,  with  a  letter 
in  her  hand,  was  just  outside  the  door. 

"  Would  you  mind,  Mrs.  Blake,"  she  said,  "  asking 
Sophy  to  mail  this  ?  " 

Esther  did  mind,  but  she  hardly  ventured  to  say  so. 
With  bitterness  in  her  heart,  she  took  the  letter  and  went 
downstairs.  Everybody,  this  swelling  heart  told  her,  was 
against  her.  She  still  did  not  dare  withstand  Rhoda,  for 
the  woman  took  care  of  grandmother  perfectly,  and  if 
she  left  it  would  be  turmoil  thrice  confounded.  She  hated 
Rhoda  the  more,  having  once  heard  Madame  Beattie's 
reception  of  a  request  to  carry  a  message  when  she  was 
going  downstairs. 

"  Certainly  not,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "  That's  what 
you  are  here  for,  my  good  woman.  Run  along  and  take 
down  my  cloak  and  put  it  in  the  carriage." 

Rhoda  went  quite  meekly,  and  Esther  having  seen,  ex 
ulted  and  thought  she  also  should  dare  revolt.  But  she 
never  did. 

And  now,  having  gone  to  grandmother  in  her  mortifi 
cation  and  trouble,  she  knew  she  ought  to  go  to  Madame 
Beattie  with  her  anger.  But  she  had  not  the  courage. 
She  could  hear  the  little  satiric  chuckle  Madame  Beattie 
would  have  ready  for  her.  And  yet,  she  knew,  it  had  to 
be  done.  But.  first  she  sent  for  Weedon  Moore.  The 
interview  had  but  just  been  published,  and  Weedon,  com 
ing  at  dusk,  was  admitted  by  Sophy  to  the  dining-room, 
where  Madame  Beattie  seldom  went.  Esther  received  him 
with  a  cool  dignity.  She  was  pale.  Grandmother  would 
no  doubt  have  said  she  made  herself  pale  in  the  interest 
of  pathos ;  but  Esther  was  truly  suffering.  Moore,  fussy, 


THE  PRISONER 

flattered,  ill  at  ease,  stood  before  her,  holding  his  hat.  She 
did  not  ask  him  to  sit  down.  There  was  an  unspoken 
tradition  in  Addington,  observed  by  everybody  but  Miss 
Amabel,  that  Moore  was  not,  save  in  cases  of  unavoid 
able  delay,  to  be  asked  to  sit.  He  passed  his  life,  so 
cially,  in  an  upright  posture.  But  Esther  began  at  once, 
fixing  her  mournful  eyes  on  his. 

"  Mr.  Moore,  I  am  distressed  about  the  interview  in  your 
paper." 

Moore,  standing,  could  not  squeeze  inspiration  out  of 
his  knees,  and  missed  it  sorely. 

"  Mrs.  Blake,"  said  he,  "  I  wouldn't  have  distressed  you 
for  the  world." 

"  I  can't  speak  to  my  aunt  about  it,"  said  Esther.  "  I 
can't  trust  myself.  I  mustn't  wound  her  as  I  should  be 
forced  to  do.  So  I  have  sent  for  you.  Mr.  Moore,  has 
she  given  you  other  material?  " 

"  Not  a  word,"  said  Weedon  earnestly.  "  If  you  could 
prevail  upon  her  — "  There  he  stopped,  remembering 
Esther  was  on  the  other  side. 

"  I  shall  have  to  be  very  frank  with  you,"  said  Esther. 
"  But  you  will  remember,  won't  you,  that  it  is  in  con 
fidence?" 

"  Yes,  ma'am,"  said  Moore.  He  had  never  fully  risen 
above  former  conditions  of  servitude  when  he  ran  errands 
and  shovelled  paths  for  Addington  gentry.  "  You  can 
rely  on  me." 

"  My  aunt,"  said  Esther  delicately,  with  an  air  of  regret 
and  several  other  picturesque  emotions  mingled  carefully, 
"  my  aunt  has  one  delusion.  It  is  connected  with  this  neck 
lace,  which  she  certainly  did  possess  at  one  time.  She 
imagines  things  about  it,  queer  things,  where  it  went  and 
where  it  is  now.  But  you  mustn't  let  her  tell  you  about 
it,  and  if  she  insists  you  mustn't  allow  it  to  get  into  print. 


222  THE  PRISONER 

It  would  be  taking  advantage,  Mr.  Moore.  Truly  it 
would."  And  as  a  magnificent  concession  she  drew  for 
ward  a  chair,  and  Weedon,  without  waiting  to  see  her 
placed,  sank  into  it  and  put  his  hands  on  his  knees.  "  You 
must  promise  me,"  Esther  half  implored,  half  insisted. 
"  It  isn't  I  alone.  It's  everybody  that  knows  her.  We 
can't,  in  justice  to  her,  let  such  a  thing  get  into  print." 

Weedon  was  much  impressed,  by  her  beauty,  her  accessi 
bility  and  his  own  incredible  position  of  having  something 
to  accord.  But  he  had  a  system  of  mental  bookkeeping. 
There  were  persons  who  asked  favours  of  him,  whom  he  put 
down  as  debtors.  "  Make  'em  pay,"  was  his  mentally 
jotted  note.  If  he  did  them  an  obliging  turn,  he  kept  his 
memory  alert  to  require  the  equivalent  at  some  other  time. 
But  he  did  not  see  how  to  make  Esther  pay.  So  he  could 
only  temporise. 

"  I'd  give  anything  to  oblige  you,  Mrs.  Blake,"  he  said, 
66  anything,  I  assure  you.  But  I  have  to  consider  the 
paper.  I'm  not  alone  there,  you  know.  It's  a  question 
of  other  people." 

Esther  was  familiar  with  that  form  of  withdrawal.  She 
herself  was  always  escaping  by  it. 

"  But  you  own  the  paper,"  she  combated  him.  "  Every 
body  says  so." 

"  I  have  met  with  a  great  deal  of  misrepresentation," 
he  replied  solemnly.  "  Justice  is  no  more  alive  to-day 
than  liberty."  Then  he  remembered  this  was  a  sentence 
he  intended  to  use  in  his  speech  to-night  on  the  old  circus- 
ground,  and  added,  as  more  apposite,  "  I'd  give  anything 
to  serve  you,  Mrs.  Blake,  I  assure  you  I  would.  But  I  owe 
a  certain  allegiance  —  a  certain  allegiance  —  I  do,  really." 

With  that  he  made  his  exit,  backing  out  and  bowing 
ridiculously  over  his  hat.  And  Esther  had  hardly  time 
to  weigh  her  defeat,  for  callers  came.  They  began  early 


THE  PRISONER 

and  continued  through  the  afternoon,  and  they  all  asked 
for  Madame  Seattle.  It  was  a  hot  day  and  Madame 
Beattie,  without  her  toupee  and  with  iced  eau  sucree  beside 
her,  was  absorbedly  reading.  She  looked  up  briefly,  when 
Sophy  conveyed  to  her  the  summons  to  meet  lingering 
ladies  below,  and  only  bade  her :  "  Excuse  me  to  them. 
Say  I'm  very  much  engaged." 

Then  she  went  on  reading.  Esther,  when  the  message 
was  suavely  but  rather  maliciously  delivered  by  Sophy, 
who  had  a  proper  animosity  for  her  social  betters,  hardly 
knew  whether  it  was  easier  to  meet  the  invaders  alone  or 
run  the  risk  of  further  disclosure  if  Madame  Beattie  ap 
peared.  For  though  no  word  was  spoken  of  diamonds  or 
interviews  or  newspapers,  she  could  follow,  with  a  hot  sen 
sitiveness,  the  curiosity  flaring  all  over  the  room,  like  a 
sky  licked  by  harmless  lightnings.  When  a  lady  equipped 
in  all  the  panoply  of  feminine  convention  asked  for  grand 
mother's  health,  she  knew  the  thought  underneath,  decently 
suppressed,  was  an  interest,  no  less  eager  for  being  un 
spoken,  in  grandmother's  attitude  toward  the  interview. 
Sometimes  she  wanted  to  answer  the  silent  question  with 
a  brutal  candour,  to  say :  "  No,  grandmother  doesn't  care. 
She  was  perfectly  horrible  about  it.  She  only  laughed." 
And  when  the  stream  of  callers  had  slackened  somewhat 
she  telephoned  Alston  Choate,  and  asked  if  he  would  come 
to  see  her  that  evening  at  nine.  She  couldn't  appoint 
an  earlier  hour  because  she  wasn't  free.  And  immediately 
after  that,  Reardon  telephoned  her  and  asked  if  he  might 
come,  rather  late,  he  hesitated,  to  be  sure  of  finding  her 
alone.  And  when  she  had  to  put  him  off  to  the  next  night, 
he  spoke  of  the  interview  as  "  unpardonable  ".  He  was 
coming,  no  doubt,  to  bring  his  condolence. 


XX 

Jeffrey  himself  had  not  seen  the  interview.  He  had 
only  a  mild  interest  in  Addington  newspapers,  and  Anne 
had  carefully  secreted  the  family  copy  lest  the  colonel 
should  come  on  it.  But  on  the  afternoon  when  Esther  was 
receiving  subtly  sympathetic  townswomen,  Jeffrey,  between 
the  rows  of  springing  corn,  heard  steps  and  looked  up  from 
his  hoeing.  It  was  Lydia,  the  Argosy  in  hand.  She  was 
flushed  not  only  with  triumph  because  something  had  be 
gun  at  last,  but  before  this  difficulty  of  entering  on  the 
tale  with  Jeff.  Pretty  child !  his  heart  quickened  at  sight 
of  her  in  her  blue  dress,  sweet  arms  and  neck  bare  because 
Lydia  so  loved  freedom.  But,  in  that  his  heart  did  re 
spond  to  her,  he  spoke  the  more  brusquely,  showing  he  had 
no  right  to  find  her  fair. 

"What  is  it?" 

Lydia,  in  a  hurry,  the  only  way  she  knew  of  doing  it, 
extended  the  paper,  previously  folded  to  expose  the  head 
line  of  Madame  Beattie's  name.  Jeff,  his  hoe  at  rest  in 
one  hand,  took  the  paper  and  looked  at  it  frowningly, 
incredulously.  Then  he  read.  A  word  or  two  escaped 
him  near  the  end.  Lydia  did  not  quite  hear  what  the  word 
was,  but  she  thought  he  was  appropriately  swearing.  Her 
eyes  glistened.  She  had  begun  to  agitate.  Jeff  had  fin 
ished  and  crushed  the  paper  violently  together,  with  no 
regard  to  folds. 

"  Oh,  don't,"  said  Lydia.  "  You  can't  get  any  more. 
They  couldn't  print  them  fast  enough." 

Jeff  passed  it  to  her  with  a  curt  gesture  of  relinquish 
ing  any  last  interest  in  it. 

224 


THE  PRISONER 

«  That's  Moore,"  he  said.     «  It's  like  him." 

Lydia  was  at  once  relieved.  She  had  been  afraid  he 
wasn't  going  to  discuss  it  at  all. 

"  You  don't  blame  her,  do  you?  "  she  prompted. 

"  Madame  Beattie?  "  He  was  thinking  hard  and  scowl 
ing.  "  No." 

"  Anne  blames  her.  She  says  no  lady  would  have  done 
it." 

"  Oh,  you  can't  call  names.  That's  Madame  Beattie," 
said  Jeff  absently.  "  She's  neither  principles  nor  morals 
nor  the  kind  of  shame  other  women  feel.  You  can't  judge 
Madame  Beattie." 

"  So  I  say,"  returned  Lydia,  inwardly  delighted  and 
resolving  to  lose  no  time  in  telling  Anne.  "  I  like  her. 
She's  nice.  She's  clever.  She  knows  how  to  manage  peo 
ple.  O  Jeff,  I  wish  you'd  talk  with  her." 

"  About  this  ?  "  He  was  still  speaking  absently.  "  It 
wouldn't  do  any  good.  If  it  amuses  her  or  satisfies  her 
devilish  feeling  toward  Esther  to  go  on  talking  and  that 
slob  will  get  it  into  print  —  and  he  will  —  you  can't  stop 
her." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  her  feeling  toward  Esther?" 
Lydia's  heart  beat  so  that  she  drew  a  long  breath  to  get 
it  into  swing  again. 

"  We  can't  go  into  that,"  said  Jeff.  "  It  runs  back  a 
long  way.  Only  everything  she  can  do  to  worry  Esther 
or  frighten  her  —  why,  she'd  do  it,  that's  all.  That's 
Madame  Beattie." 

Lydia  knew  this  was  the  path  that  led  to  the  necklace. 
Why  couldn't  she  tell  him  she  knew  the  story  and  enlist 
him  on  Madame  Beattie's  side  and  hers,  the  side  that  was 
fighting  for  him  and  nothing  else?  But  she  did  not  dare. 
All  she  could  do  was  to  say,  her  hands  cold  against  each 
other  and  her  voice  choked : 


226  THE  PRISONER 

"  0  Jeff,  I  wish  you'd  give  this  up." 

"What?" 

He  was  recalled  now  from  memories  the  printed  paper 
had  wakened  in  him,  and  looking  at  her  kindly.  At  least 
Lydia  was  sure  he  was,  because  his  voice  sounded  so  dear. 
She  could  not  know  his  eyes  were  full  of  an  adoring  gen 
tleness  over  her  who  seemed  to  him  half  child,  half  maiden, 
and  tumultuously  compassionate.  She  made  a  little  timid 
gesture  of  the  hand  over  the  small  area  about  them. 

"  This,"  she  said.  "  You  mustn't  stay  here  and 
hoe  corn.  You  must  get  into  business  and  show  peo 
ple  — " 

Her  voice  choked.     It  refused  absurdly  to  go  on. 

"  Why,  Lydia,"  said  he,  "  I  thought  you  knew.  This 
is  the  only  way  for  a  man  to  keep  alive.  When  I've  got  a 
hoe  in  my  hand  —  "  He  could  not  quite  explain  it.  He 
had  always  had  a  flow  of  words  on  paper,  but  since  he  had 
believed  his  life  was  finished  his  tongue  had  been  more  and 
more  lethargic.  It  would  not  obey  his  brain  because, 
after  all,  what  could  the  brain  report  of  his  distrustful 
heart?  Lydia  had  a  moment  of  bitter  mortification  be 
cause  she  had  not  seemed  to  understand.  Anne  under 
stood,  she  knew,  and  had  tried,  with  infinite  patience,  to 
help  on  this  queer  experiment,  both  for  Jeff's  sake  and 
Farvie's.  Tears  rushed  to  her  eyes. 

"  I  can't  help  it,"  she  said.  "  I  want  you  to  be  doing 
something  real." 

"  Lydia !  "  said  Jeff.  His  kind,  persuasive  voice  was 
recalling  her  to  some  ground  of  conviction  where  she  could 
share  his  certainty  that  things  were  going  as  well  as  they 
could.  "  This  is  almost  the  only  real  thing  in  the  world  — 
the  ground.  About  everything  else  is  a  game.  This  isn't 
a  game.  It's  making  something  grow  that  won't  hurt 
anybody  when  it's  grown.  I  cars't  harm  anybody  by 


THE  PRISONER  227 

planting  corn.  And  I  can  sell  the  corn,"  said  Jeff,  with  a 
lighter  shade  of  voice.  Lydia  knew  he  was  smiling  to 
please  her.  "  Denny's  going  to  peddle  it  out  for  me  at 
backdoors.  I'd  do  it  myself,  only  I'm  afraid  they'd  buy 
to  help  on  '  poor  Jeffrey  Blake  '." 

When  he  spoke  of  the  ground  Lydia  gave  the  loose  dirt 
a  little  scornful  kick  and  got  the  powdered  dust  into  her 
neat  stockings.  She,  too,  loved  the  ground  and  all  the 
sweet  usages  of  homely  life ;  but  not  if  they  kept  him  from 
a  spectacular  triumph.  She  was  desperate  enough  to 
venture  her  one  big  plea. 

"  Jeff,  you  know  you've  got  a  lot  of  money  to  earn  — 
to  pay  back  —  " 

And  there  she  stopped.  He  was  regarding  her  gravely, 
but  the  moment  he  spoke  she  knew  it  was  not  in  any  of 
fence. 

"  Lydia,  I  give  you  my  word  I  couldn't  do  the  kind 
of  thing  you  want  me  to.  I've  found  that  out  at  last. 
You'd  like  me  to  cut  into  the  market  a-nd  make  a  lot  of 
money  and  throw  it  back  at  the  people  I  owe.  I  couldn't 
do  it.  My  brain  wouldn't  let  me.  It's  stopped  —  stopped 
short.  A  man  knows  when  he's  done  for.  I'm  absolutely 
and  entirely  done.  All  I  hope  for  is  to  keep  father  from 
finding  it  out.  He  seems  to  be  getting  his  nerve  back,  and 
if  he  really  does  that  I  may  be  able  to  go  away  and  do 
something  besides  dig.  But  it  won't  be  anything  spectacu 
lar,  Lydia.  It  isn't  in  me." 

Lydia  turned  away  from  him,  and  he  could  fancy  the 
bright  tears  dropping  as  she  walked.  "  Oh,  dear ! "  he 
heard  her  sa-y.  "  Oh,  dear !  " 

"  Lydia !  "  he  called,  in  an  impatience  of  tenderness 
and  misery.  "  Come  back  here.  Don't  you  know  I'd  do 
anything  on  earth  I  could  for  you?  But  there's  nothing 
I  can  do.  You  wouldn't  ask  a  lame  man  to  dance.  There  ! 


228  THE  PRISONER 

that  shows  you.  When  it  comes  to  dancing  you  can  un 
derstand.  I'm  a  cripple,  Lydia.  Don't  you  see?" 

She  had  turned  obediently,  and  now  she  smeared  the 
tears  away  with  one  small  hand. 

"  You  don't  understand,"  she  said.  "  You  don't  under 
stand  a  thing.  We've  thought  of  it  all  this  time,  Anne 
and  I,  how  you'd  come  out  and  be  proved  not  guilty  —  " 

66  But,  Lydia,"  he  said  gravely,  "  I  was  guilty.  And 
besides  being  guilty  of  things  the  courts  condemned  me  for, 
I  was  guilty  of  things  I  had  to  condemn  myself  for  after 
ward.  I  wasn't  a  criminal  merely.  I  was  a  waster  and  a 
fool." 

"  Yes,"  said  Lydia,  looking  at  him  boldly,  "  and  if  you 
were  guilty  who  made  you  so?  Who  pushed  you  on?  " 

She  had  never  entirely  abandoned  her  theory  of  Rear- 
don.  He  and  Esther,  in  her  suspicion,  stood  side  by 
side.  Looking  at  him,  she  rejoiced  in  what  she  thought  his 
confirmation.  The  red  had  run  into  his  face  and  he  looked 
at  her  with  brightened  eyes. 

"  You  don't  know  anything  about  it,"  he  said  harshly. 
"  I  did  what  I  did.  And  I  got  my  medicine.  And  if 
there's  a  decent  impulse  left  in  me  to-day,  it  was  because  I 
got  it." 

Lydia  walked  away  through  the  soft  dirt  and  felt 
as  if  she  were  dancing.  He  had  looked  guilty  when  she 
had  asked  him  who  pushed  him  on.  He  and  she  both  knew 
it  was  Esther,  and  a  little  more  likelihood  of  Madame 
Beattie's  blackguarding  Esther  in  print  must  rouse  him  to 
command  the  situation. 

Jeffrey  finished  his  row,  and  then  hurried  into  the  house. 
It  was  the  late  afternoon,  and  he  went  to  his  room  and 
dressed,  in  time  for  supper.  Lydia,  glancing  at  him  as  he 
left  the  table,  thought  exultantly :  "  I've  stirred  him  up,  at 
least.  Now  what  is  he  going  to  do  ?  " 


'-•? 


THE  PRISONER 

Jeffrey  went  strolling  down  the  drive,  and  quickened  his 
steps  when  the  shrubbery  had  him  well  hidden  from  the 
windows.  Something  assured  him  it  was  likely  Weedon 
Moore  lived  still  in  the  little  sharp-gabled  house  on  a  side 
street  where  he  had  years  ago.  His  mother  had  been 
with  him  then,  and  Jeff  remembered  Miss  Amabel  had 
scrupulously  asked  for  her  when  Moore  came  to  call.  The 
little  house  was  unchanged,  brightly  painted,  gay  in  dia 
mond  trellis-work  and  picked  out  with  scarlet  tubs  of  hy 
drangea  in  the  yard.  A  car  stood  at  the  gate,  and  Wee 
don,  buttoning  his  coat,  was  stepping  in.  The  car  ran 
past,  and  Jeff  saw  that  the  man  beside  Moore  was  the  inter 
preter  of  that  night  at  the  old  circus-ground. 

"  So,"  he  thought,  "  more  ginger  for  the  labouring 
man." 

He  turned  about  and  walking  thoughtfully,  balked  of 
his  design,  reflected  with  distaste  that  grew  into  indigna 
tion  on  Moore's  incredible  leadership.  It  seemed  mon 
strous.  Here  was  ignorance  fallen  into  the  hands  of  the 
demagogue.  It  was  an  outrage  on  the  decencies.  And 
then  Madame  Beattie  waved  to  him  from  Denny's  hack, 
and  he  stepped  into  the  road  to  speak  to  her. 

"  I  was  going  to  see  you,"  she  said.     "  Get  in  here." 

Jeff  got  in  and  disposed  his  length  as  best  he  might  in 
the  cramped  interior,  redolent  now  of  varied  scents,  all 
delicate  but  mingled  to  a  suffocating  potency. 

"  Tell  him  to  drive  along  outside  the  town,"  she  bade. 
"  Were  you  going  to  see  me?  " 

"  No,"  said  Jeffrey,  after  executing  her  order.  "  I've 
told  you  I  can't  go  to  see  you." 

"  Because  Esther  made  that  row?  absurd!  It's  Susan's 
house." 

"  I'm  not  likely  to  go  into  it,"  said  Jeff  drily,  "  unless  I 
am  summoned." 


230  THE  PRISONER 

«  She's  a  fool." 

"  But  I  don't  mind  telling  you  where  I  was  going,"  said 
Jeff.  "  I  was  going  to  lick  Weedon  Moore  —  or  the 
equivalent." 

"  Not  on  account  of  my  interview  ? "  said  Madame 
Beattie,  laughing  very  far  down  in  her  anatomy.  Her 
deep  laugh,  Jeff  always  felt,  could  only  have  been  attained 
by  adequate  support  in  the  diaphragm.  "  Bless  you,  dear 
boy,  you  needn't  blame  him.  I  went  to  him.  Went  to  his 
office.  Blame  me." 

"  Oh,  I  blame  you  all  right,"  said  Jeff,  "  but  you're  not 
a  responsible  person.  A  chap  that  owns  a  paper  is." 

"  I  wish  you'd  met  him,"  she  said,  in  great  enjoyment. 
"  Where'd  he  go,  Jeffrey?  Can't  we  find  him  now?  " 

"  I  suspect  he  went  to  the  old  circus-ground.  I  caught 
him  there  talking  to  Poles  and  Finns  and  Italians  and 
Greeks,  telling  them  the  country  was  no  good  and  they 
owned  it." 

"  Why,  the  fellow  can't  speak  to  them."  Madame 
Beattie,  being  a  fluent  linguist,  had  natural  scorn  of  a 
tubby  little  New  Englander  who  said  "  ma'am  ". 

"  Oh,  he  had  an  interpreter." 

"  We'll  drive  along  there,"  said  Madame  Beattie. 
"  You  tell  Denny.  I  should  dearly  like  to  see  them. 
Poles,  do  you  say?  I  didn't  know  there  were  such  people 
in  town." 

Jeffrey,  rather  curious  himself,  told  Denny,  and  they 
bowled  cumbrously  along.  He  felt  in  a  way  obliged  to 
proffer  a  word  or  two  about  the  interview. 

"  What  the  devil  made  you  do  it  anyway  ?  "  he  asked 
her ;  but  Madame  Beattie  chuckled  and  would  not  answer. 


XXI 

All  the  way  along,  in  the  warm  twilight,  Madame  Beattie 
was  gay  over  the  prospect  of  being  fought  for.  With  the 
utmost  precision  and  unflagging  spirit  she  arranged  a 
plausible  cause  for  combat,  and  Jeffrey,  not  in  the  least 
intending  to  play  his  allotted  part,  yet  enjoyed  the  mo 
ment  fully. 

66  You  shall  do  it,"  Madame  Beattie  assured  him,  as  if 
she  permitted  him  to  enter  upon  a  task  for  which  there 
was  wide  competition.  "  You  shall  thrash  him,  and  he 
will  put  it  in  his  paper,  and  the  European  papers  will 
copy." 

"  I  haven't  much  idea  the  Argosy  is  read  in  foreign 
capitals,"  Jeff  felt  bound  to  assure  her. 

"  Oh,  but  we  can  cable  it.  The  French  journals  —  they 
used  to  be  very  good  to  me." 

With  that  her  face  darkened,  not  in  a  softening  melan 
choly,  but  old  bitterness  and  defeat.  She  was  not  always 
able  to  ignore  the  contrast  between  the  spring  of  youth 
and  this  meagre  eld.  Jeffrey  saw  the  tremendous  recogni 
tion  she  assuredly  had  had,  grown  through  the  illusive  fruc 
tifying  of  memory  into  something  overwhelming,  and  he 
was  glad  starved  vanity  might  once  more  be  fed.  She 
seemed  to  him  a  most  piteous  spectacle,  youth  and  power 
in  ruins,  and  age  too  poor  to  nourish  even  a  vine  to  drape 
the  crumbling  walls. 

"  Patricia  Beattie,"  she  continued,  "  again  a  casus  belli. ' 
Combat  between  two  men  —  " 

"  There  won't  be  any  combat,"  Jeff  reminded  her.     "  If 

I  kick  Weedie,  he'll  take  it  lying  down.     That's  Weedie." 

231 


THE  PRISONER 

"  I  shall  stand  by,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "  If  you  go 
too  far  I  shall  interfere.  So  you  can  go  as  far  as  you 
like." 

"  I  do  rather  want  to  know  what  Weedie's  at,"  said 
Jeff.  "  But  I  sha'n't  kick  him.  He  doesn't  deserve  it  at 
one  time  any  more  than  another,  though  he  has  different 
degrees  of  making  himself  offensive." 

She  was  ingenuously  disappointed.  She  even  re 
proached  him: 

"  You  said  you  were  going  to  do  it." 

"  That  was  in  my  haste,"  said  Jeffrey.  "  I  can't  lick 
him  with  a  woman  standing  by.  I  should  feel  like  a  fool." 

Denny  was  drawing  up  at  the  circus-ground. 

"  Well,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  "  you've  disappointed 
me  tremendously.  That's  all  I  can  say." 

It  was  dark  now,  and  though  the  season  was  more  ad 
vanced,  Jeffrey  could  imagine  that  this  was  the  moment 
of  his  arrival  that  other  night,  save  that  he  was  not  now 
footsore  or  dull  in  the  mind.  But  the  same  dusk  of  crowd 
ing  forms  lay  thickly  on  the  field,  and  there,  he  knew, 
was  the  stationary  car;  there  were  the  two  figures  stand 
ing  in  it,  Moore  and  his  interpreter.  He  could  fill  out  the 
picture  with  a  perfect  accuracy,  Moore  gesticulating  and 
throwing  frenzy  into  his  high-pitched  voice,  which  now 
came  stridently.  Madame  Beattie  breathed  out  excite 
ment.  Nothing  so  spiced  had  ever  befallen  her  in  Ad- 
dington. 

"  Is  he  actually  speaking?  "  she  asked,  in  a  hoarse  whis 
per.  "  They  say  insects  make  noises  with  their  hind  legs. 
It's  more  like  that  than  a  voice.  Take  me  round  there, 
Jeffrey." 

He  was  quite  willing.  With  a  good  old  pal  like  this  to 
egg  y°u  on,  he  thought,  there  actually  was  some  fun  left. 
So  he  handed  her  out,  and  told  Denny  to  wait  for  them, 


THE  PRISONER  233 

and  they  skirted  the  high  board  fence  to  the  gap  in  the 
back.  Madame  Beattie,  holding  up  her  long  dress  in  one 
hand  and  tripping  quite  nimbly,  was  clinging  to  his  arm. 
By  the  gap  they  halted  for  her  to  recover  breath;  she 
drew  her  hand  from  Jeff's  arm,  opened  her  little  bag,  took 
out  a  bit  of  powder  paper  and  mechanically  rubbed  her 
face.  Jeff  looked  on  indulgently.  He  knew  she  did  not 
expect  to  need  an  enhanced  complexion  in  this  obscurity. 
The  act  refreshed  her,  that  was  all. 

Weedon,  it  was  easy  to  note,  was  battering  down 
tradition. 

"  They  talk  about  their  laws,"  he  shrilled.  "  I  am  a 
lawyer,  and  I  tell  you  it  breaks  my  heart  every  time  I  go 
back  to  worm-eaten  precedent.  But  I  have  to  do  it,  be 
cause,  if  I  didn't  talk  that  language  the  judges  wouldn't 
understand  me.  Do  you  know  what  precedent  is?  It  is 
the  opinion  of  some  man  a  hundred  years  ago  on  a  case 
tried  a  hundred  years  ago.  Do  we  want  that  kind  of  an 
opinion?  No.  We  want  our  own  opinions  on  cases  that 
are  tried  to-day." 

The  warm  rapid  voice  of  the  interpreter  came  in  here, 
and  Madame  Beattie,  who  was  standing  apart  from  Jef 
frey,  touched  his  arm.  He  bent  to  listen. 

"  The  man's  a  fool,"  said  she. 

"No,"  said  Jeffrey,  "he's  not  a  fool.  He  knows 
mighty  well  what  he's  saying  and  how  it'll  take." 

"  If  I  had  all  the  lawbooks  in  the  world,"  said  Weedon, 
"  I'd  pile  them  up  here  on  this  ground  we've  made  free 
ground  because  we  have  free  speech  on  it,  and  I'd  touch 
a  match  to  them,  and  by  the  light  they  made  we'd  sit  down 
here  and  frame  our  own  laws.  And  they  would  be  laws 
for  the  rich  as  well  as  the  poor.  Columbus  did  one  good 
thing  for  us.  He  discovered  a  new  world.  The  capital 
ists  have  done  their  best  to  spoil  it,  and  turn  it  into  a 


234.  THE  PRISONER 

world  as  rotten  as  the  old  ones.  But  Columbus  showed 
us  you  can  find  a  new  world  if  you  try.  And  we're  going 
to  have  a  new  world  out  of  this  one  yet.  New  laws,  new 
laws,  I  tell  you,  new  laws ! " 

He  screamed  it  at  the  end,  this  passion  for  new  laws, 
and  the  interpreter,  though  he  had  too  just  an  instinct  to 
take  so  high  a  key,  followed  him  with  an  able  crescendo. 
Weedie  thought  he  had  his  audience  in  hand,  though  it 
was  the  interpreter  who  really  had  it,  and  he  ventured 
another  stroke: 

"  I  don't  want  them  to  tell  me  what  some  man  taught 
in  Bible  days.  I  want  to  know  what  a  man  thinks  right 
here  in  Addington.  I  don't  want  them  to  tell  me  what 
they  thought  in  Greece  and  Rome.  Greece  and  Rome  are 
dead.  The  only  part  of  them  that's  alive  is  the  Greece 
and  Rome  of  to-day." 

When  the  interpreter  passed  this  on,  he  stopped  at  a 
dissentient  murmur.  There  were  those  who  knew  the 
bright  history  of  their  natal  country  and  adored  it. 

"  Oh,  the  man's  a  fool,"  said  Madame  Beattie  again. 
"  I'm  going  in  there." 

She  took  up  the  tail  of  her  gown,  put  her  feather- 
crowned  head  through  the  gap  in  the  fence  and  drew  her 
august  person  after,  and  Jeffrey  followed  her.  He  had 
a  gay  sense  of  irresponsibility,  of  seeking  the  event.  He 
was  grateful  to  Madame  Beattie.  They  went  on,  and  as 
it  was  that  other  night,  some  withdrew  to  leave  a  pathway 
and  others  stared,  but,  finding  no  specific  reason,  did  not 
hinder  them.  Madame  Beattie  spoke  once  or  twice,  a  brief 
mandate  in  a  foreign  tongue,  and  that,  Jeff  noted,  was 
effective.  She  stepped  up  on  the  running-board  of  the  car 
and  laid  her  hand  on  the  interpreter's  arm. 

"  You  may  go,  my  friend,"  said  she,  quite  affectionately. 
"  I  do  not  need  you."  Then  she  said  something,  possibly 


THE  PRISONER  235 

the  same  thing,  Jeff  thought,  in  another  language,  and  the 
man  laughed.  Madame  Beattie,  without  showing  sign  of 
recognising  Moore,  who  was  at  her  elbow,  bent  forward 
into  the  darkness  and  gave  a  shrill  call.  The  crowd  gath 
ered  nearer.  Its  breath  was  but  one  breath.  The  black 
ness  of  the  assemblage  was  as  if  you  poured  ink  into  water 
and  made  it  dense.  Jeffrey  felt  at  once  how  sympathetic 
they  were  with  her.  What  was  the  cry  she  gave?  Was 
it  some  international  password  or  a  gipsy  note  of  uni 
versal  import?  Had  she  called  them  friend  in  a  tongue 
they  knew  ?  Now  she  began  speaking,  huskily  at  first,  with 
tumultuous  syllables  and  wide  open  vowels,  and  at  the  first 
pause  they  cheered.  The  inky  multitude  that  had  kept 
silence,  by  preconcerted  plan,  while  Weedon  Moore  talked 
to  them,  lost  control  of  itself  and  yelled.  She  went  on 
speaking  and  they  crashed  in  on  her  pauses  with  more 
plaudits,  and  presently  she  laid  her  hand  on  Jeffrey's 
shoulder  and  said  to  him : 

"  Come  up  here  beside  me." 

He  shook  his  head.  He  was  highly  entertained,  but  the 
mysterious  game  was  hers  and  Weedie's.  She  gave  an 
order,  it  seemed,  in  a  foreign  tongue,  and  the  thing  was 
managed.  The  interpreter  had  stepped  from  the  car,  and 
now  gentle  yet  forcible  hands  lifted  down  Weedon  Moore, 
and  set  him  beside  it  and  other  hands  as  gently  set  up  Jef 
frey  in  his  place.  There  he  stood  with  her  in  a  dramatic 
isolation,  but  so  great  was  the  carrying  power  of  her  mys 
tery  that  he  did  not  feel  himself  a  fool.  It  was  quite  natu 
ral  to  be  there  for  some  unknown  purpose,  at  one  with  her 
and  that  warmly  breathing  mass :  for  no  purpose,  perhaps, 
save  that  they  were  all  human  and  meant  the  same  thing, 
a  general  good-will.  She  went  on  speaking,  and  Jeffrey 
knew  there  was  fire  in  her  words.  He  bent  to  the  inter 
preter  beside  the  car  and  asked,  at  the  man's  ear: 


236  THE  PRISONER 

"  What  is  she  saying?  " 

The  interpreter  turned  and  looked  him  in  the  face. 
They  were  not  more  than  three  inches  apart,  and  Jeffrey, 
gazing  into  the  passionate  black  eyes,  tasting,  as  it  were, 
the  odour  of  the  handsome  creature  and  feeling  his  breath, 
was  not  repelled,  but  had  a  sudden  shyness  before  him, 
as  if  the  man's  opinion  of  him  were  an  attack  on  his  inmost 
self,  an  attack  of  adoring  admiration. 

"What  is  she  saying?"  he  repeated,  and  for  answer 
the  interpreter  snatched  one  of  Jeff's  hands  and  seemed 
about  to  kiss  it. 

"  For  God's  sake,  don't  do  that,"  Jeff  heard  himself 
saying,  and  withdrew  his  hand  and  straightened  at  a 
safe  distance  from  the  adoring  face,  and  he  heard  Madame 
Beattie  going  on  in  her  fiery  periods.  Whatever  she  was 
saying,  they  loved  it,  loved  it  to  the  point  of  madness. 
They  cheered  her,  and  the  interpreter  did  not  check  them, 
but  cheered  too.  To  Jeffrey  it  was  all  a  medley  of  strange 
thoughts.  Here  he  was,  in  the  crowd  and  not  of  it,  greatly 
moved  and  yet  not  as  the  others  were,  because  he  did  not 
understand.  And  though  the  voice  and  the  answering 
enthusiasm  went  on  for  a  long  time,  and  still  he  did  not 
understand,  he  was  not  tired  but  exhilarated  only.  The 
moon,  the  drifting  clouds,  the  dramatic  voice  playing  upon 
the  hearts  of  the  multitude,  their  hot  responses,  all  this 
gave  him  a  sense  of  augmented  life  and  the  feel  of  his 
own  past  youth.  Suddenly  he  fancied  Madame  Beattie's 
voice  failed  a  little;  something  ebbed  in  it,  not  so  much 
force  as  quality. 

"  That's  all,"  she  said,  in  a  quick  aside  to  him.  "  Let's 
go."  She  gave  an  order,  in  English  now,  and  a  figure 
started  out  of  the  crowd  and  cranked  the  car. 

"  We  can't  go  in  this,"  Jeffrey  said  to  her.  "  This  is 
Moore's  car." 


THE  PRISONER  237 

But  Madame  Seattle  had  seated  herself  majestically. 
Her  feathers  even  were  portentous  in  the  moonlight,  like 
the  plumage  of  some  gigantic  bird.  She  gave  another 
order,  whereupon  the  man  who  had  cranked  the  machine 
took  his  place  in  it,  and  the  crowd  parted  for  them  to 
pass.  Jeffrey  was  amused  and  dashed.  He  couldn't  leave 
her,  nor  could  they  sail  away  in  Weedon's  car.  He  put  a 
hand  on  her  arm. 

"  See  here,  Madame  Beattie,"  said  he,  "  we  can't  do  this. 
We  must  get  out  at  the  gate,  at  least." 

But  Madame  Beattie  was  bowing  graciously  to  right  and 
left.  Once  she  rose  for  an  instant  and  addressed  a  curt 
sentence  to  the  crowd,  and  in  answer  they  cheered,  a  full- 
mouthed  chorus  of  one  word  in  different  tongues. 

"  What  are  they  yelling?  "  Jeffrey  asked. 

"  It's  for  you,"  Madame  Beattie  said  composedly. 
"  They're  cheering  you." 

"  Me?    How  do  you  know?    That's  not  my  name." 

"No.  It's  The  Prisoner.  They're  calling  you  The 
Prisoner." 

They  were  at  the  gate  now,  and  turned  into  the  road 
and,  with  a  free  course  before  him,  the  man  put  on  speed 
and  they  were  away.  Jeffrey  bent  forward  to  him,  but 
Madame  Beattie  pulled  him  back. 

"  What  are  you  doing?  "  she  inquired.  "  We're  gging 
home." 

"  This  is  Moore's  car,"  Jeffrey  reminded  her. 

"  No,  it  isn't.  It's  the  proletariat's  car."  She  rolled 
the  r  surprisingly.  "  Do  you  suppose  he  comes  out  here 
to  corrupt  those  poor  devils  without  making  them  pay  for 
being  corrupted?  Jeffrey,  take  off  your  coat." 

"  What  for  ?  "  He  had  resigned  himself  to  his  position. 
It  was  a  fit  part  of  the  whole  eccentric  pastime,  and  after 
all  it  was  only  Weedie's  car. 


238  THE  PRISONER 

"  I  shall  take  cold.  I  got  very  warm  speaking.  My 
voice  —  " 

To  neither  of  them  now  was  it  absurd.  Though  it  was 
years  since  she  had  had  a  voice  the  habit  of  a  passionate 
care  was  still  alive  in  her.  Jeffrey  had  come  on  another 
rug,  and  wrapped  it  round  her.  He  went  back  to  his  first 
wonder. 

"  But  what  is  there  in  being  a  prisoner  to  start  up  such 
a  row?  " 

Madame  Beattie  had  retired  into  the  rug.  She  sunk 
her  chin  in  it  and  would  talk  no  more.  Without  further 
interchange  they  drew  up  at  her  house.  Jeffrey  got  out 
and  helped  her,  and  she  stood  for  a  moment,  pressing  her 
hand  on  his  arm,  heavily,  as  an  old  woman  leans. 

"  Ah,  Jeffrey,"  said  she  rapidly,  in  a  low  but  quite  a 
naked  tone  with  no  lisping  ornament,  "  this  is  a  night.  To 
think  I  should  have  to  come  back  here  to  this  God-for 
saken  spot  for  a  minute  of  the  old  game.  Hundreds  hang 
ing  on  my  voice  — "  he  fancied  she  had  forgotten  now 
whether  she  had  not  sung  to  them  —  "  and  feeling  what  I 
told  them  to  feel.  They're  capital  people.  We'll  talk 
to  them  again." 

She  had  turned  toward  the  door  and  now  she  came  back 
and  struck  his  arm  violently  with  her  hand. 

"  Jeff,"  said  she  passionately,  "  you're  a  fool.  You've 
still  got  your  youth  and  you  won't  use  it.  And  the 
world  looks  like  this  —  "  she  glanced  up  at  the  radiant 
sky.  "  Even  in  Addington,  the  moon  is  after  us  trying 
to  seduce  us  to  the  old  pleasures.  You've  got  youth. 
Use  it.  For  God's  sake,  use  it." 

Now  she  did  go  up  the  steps  and  having  rung  the  bell 
for  her,  ignoring  the  grim  knocker  that  looked  as  if  it 
would  take  more  than  one  summons  to  get  past  its  guard, 
Jeff  told  the  man  to  drive  back  for  Mr.  Moore.  The  car 


THE  PRISONER  239 

had  gone,  and  still  Madame  Beattie  rang.  She  knew  and 
Jeffrey  suspected  suddenly  that  Esther  was  paying  her 
out  for  illicit  roaming.  Suddenly  Madame  Beattie  raised 
her  voice  and  called  twice: 

"Esther!     Esther!" 

The  sound  echoed  in  the  silent  street,  appallingly  to  one 
who  knew  what  Addington  streets  were  and  what  proprie 
ties  lined  them.  Then  the  door  did  open.  Jeffrey  fan 
cied  the  smooth-faced  maid  had  slipped  the  bolt.  Esther, 
from  what  he  knew  of  her,  was  not  by  to  face  the  music. 
He  heard  the  door  shut  cautiously  and  walked  away,  but 
not  to  go  immediately  home.  What  did  Madame  Beattie 
mean  by  telling  him  to  use  his  youth?  All  he  wanted  was 
to  hold  commerce  with  the  earth  and  dig  hard  enough  to 
keep  himself  tired  so  that  he  might  sleep.  For  since  he 
had  come  out  of  prison  he  was  every  day  more  subject  to 
this  besetment  of  recalling  the  past.  It  was  growing  upon 
him  that  he  had  always  made  wrong  choices.  Youth,  what 
seemed  to  him  through  the  vista  of  vanished  time  a  child 
hood  even,  when  he  was  but  little  over  twenty,  had  been 
a  delirium  of  expectation  in  a  world  that  was  merely  a  gay- 
coloured  spot  where,  if  you  were  reasonably  fit,  as  youth 
should  be,  you  could  always  snatch  the  choicest  fruit  from 
the  highest  bough.  Then  he  had  met  Esther,  and  the 
world  stopped  being  a  playground  and  became  an  ordered 
pageant,  and  he  was  the  moving  power,  trying  to  make  it 
move  faster  or  more  lightly,  to  please  Esther  who  was  sit 
ting  in  front  to  see  it  move,  and  who  was  of  a  decided  mind 
in  pageants.  It  was  always  Esther  who  was  to  be  pleased. 
These  things  he  had  not  thought  of  willingly  during  his 
imprisonment,  because  it  was  necessary  not  to  think,  lest 
the  discovery  of  the  right  causes  that  brought  him  there 
should  turn  his  brain.  But  now  he  had  leisure  and  free 
dom  and  a  measure  of  solitude,  and  it  began  to  strike  him 


240  THE  PRISONER 

that  heretofore,  being  in  the  pageant  and  seeing  it  move, 
he  had  not  enjoyed  it  over  much.  There  had  been  a  good 
deal  of  laughter  and  light  and  colour  —  there  had  to  be, 
since  these  were  the  fruits  Esther  lived  on  —  but  there  had 
been  no  affectionate  converse  with  the  world.  Strange 
old  Madame  Beattie!  she  had  brought  him  the  world  to 
night.  She  had  taken  strangers  from  its  furthest  quar 
ters  and  welded  them  into  a  little  community  that  laughed 
and  shouted  and  thought  according  things.  That  they 
had  hailed  him,  even  as  a  prisoner,  brought  him  a  little 
warmth.  It  was  mysterious,  but  it  seemed  they  somehow 
liked  him,  and  he  went  into  the  quiet  house  and  to  bed 
with  the  feeling  of  having  touched  a  hand. 


XXII 

Within  a  week  Jeffrey,  going  down  town  in  his  blue 
blouse  to  do  an  errand  at  the  stores,  twice  met  squads  of 
workmen  coming  from  the  mill  —  warm-coloured,  swarthy 
men,  most  of  them  young.  He  was  looking  at  them  in  a 
sudden  curiosity  as  to  their  making  part  of  Weedon 
Moore's  audience,  when  bright  pleasure  rippled  over  the 
dark  faces.  They  knew  him ;  they  were  mysteriously  glad 
to  see  him.  Caps  were  snatched  off.  Jeffrey  snatched  at 
his  in  return.  There  was  a  gleam  of  white  teeth  all 
through  the  squad;  as  he  passed  in  the  ample  way  they 
made  for  him,  he  felt  foolishly  as  if  they  were  going  to 
stretch  out  kind  detaining  hands.  They  looked  so  tropi 
cally  warm  and  moved,  he  hardly  knew  what  greeting  he 
might  receive.  "  What  have  I  done?  "  he  thought.  "  Are 
they  going  to  kiss  me  ?  "  He  wished  he  could  see  Madame 
Beattie  and  ask  her  what  she  had  really  caused  to  happen. 

But  on  a  later  afternoon,  at  his  work  in  the  field,  he 
saw  Miss  Amabel  carefully  treading  among  corn  hills, 
very  hot  though  in  her  summer  silk  and  with  a  parasol. 
She  always  did  feel  the  heat  but  patiently,  as  one  under 
bonds  of  meekness  to  the  God  who  sent  it ;  but  to-day  her 
discomfort  was  within.  Jeffrey  threw  down  his  hoe  and 
wiped  his  face.  There  was  a  bench  under  the  beech  tree 
shade.  He  had  put  it  there  so  that  his  father  might  be 
beguiled  into  resting  after  work.  When  she  reached  the 
edge  of  the  corn,  he  advanced  and  took  her  parasol  and 

held  it  over  her. 

241 


THE  PRISONER 

"  Ladies  shouldn't  come  out  here,"  he  said.  "  They 
must  send  Mary  Nellen  to  fetch  me  in." 

Miss  Amabel  sat  down  on  the  bench  and  did  a  little 
extra  breathing,  while  she  looked  at  him  affectionately. 

"  You  are  a  good  boy,  Jeff,"  said  she,  at  length,  "  what 
ever  you've  been  doing." 

"  I've  been  hoeing,"  said  Jeff.     "  Here,  let  me." 

He  took  her  large  fine  handkerchief,  still  in  its  crisp 
folds,  and  with  an  absurd  and  yet  pretty  care  wiped  her 
face  with  it.  He  wiped  it  all  over,  the  moist  forehead, 
the  firm  chin  where  beads  stood  glistening,  and  Miss  Ama 
bel  let  him,  saying  only  as  he  finished : 

"  Father  used  to  perspire  on  his  chin." 

"  There,"  said  Jeffrey.  He  folded  the  handkerchief  and 
returned  it  to  its  bag.  "  Now  you're  a  nice  dry  child.  I 
suppose  you've  got  your  shoes  full  of  dirt.  Mine  are  when 
I've  been  out  here." 

"  Never  mind  my  shoes,"  said  she.  "  Jeff,  how  nice  you 
are.  How  much  you  are  to-day  like  what  you  used  to  be 
when  you  were  a  boy." 

"  I  feel  rather  like  it  nowadays,"  said  Jeff,  (i  I  don't 
know  why.  Except  that  I  come  out  here  and  play  by  my 
self  and  they  all  let  me  alone." 

"  But  you  mustn't  play  tricks,"  said  Miss  Amabel. 
"  You  must  be  good  and  not  play  tricks  on  other  people." 

Jeff  drew  up  his  knees  and  clasped  his  hands  about 
them.  His  eyes  were  on  the  corn  shimmering  in  the  heat. 

"What's  in  your  bonnet,  dear?"  said  he.  "I  hear  a 
buzz." 

"  What  happened  the  other  night  ?  "  she  asked.  "  It 
came  to  my  ears,  I  won't  say  how." 

"  Weedie  told  you.     Weedie  always  told." 

"  I  don't  say  it  was  Mr.  Weedon  Moore." 


THE  PRISONER 

She  was  speaking  with  dignity,  and  Jeffrey  laughed 
and  unclasped  his  hands  to  pat  her  on  the  arm. 

"  I  wonder  why  it  makes  you  so  mad  to  have  me  call 
him  Weedie." 

She  answered  rather  hotly,  for  her. 

"  You  wouldn't  do  it,  any  of  you,  if  you  weren't  dis 
paraging  him." 

"  Oh,  we  might.  Out  of  affection.  Weedie !  good  old 
Weedie !  can't  you  hear  us  saying  that  ?  " 

"  No,  I  can't.  You  wouldn't  say  it  that  way.  Don't 
chaff  me,  Jeff.  What  do  they  say  now  —  'jolly'  me? 
Don't  do  that." 

Again  Jeffrey  gave  her  a  light  touch  of  affectionate  in 
timacy. 

"What  is  it?"  said  he.  "What  do  you  want  me  to 
do?" 

"  I  want  you  to  let  Weedon  Moore  talk  to  people  who 
are  more  ignorant  than  the  rest  of  us,  and  tell  them 
things  they  ought  to  know.  About  the  country,  about 
everything." 

"  You  don't  want  me  to  spoil  Weedie's  game." 

"  It  isn't  a  game,  Jeff.  That  young  man  is  giving  up 
his  time,  and  with  the  purest  motives,  to  fitting  our  for 
eign  population  for  the  duties  of  citizenship.  He  doesn't 
disturb  the  public  peace.  He  takes  the  men  away  after 
their  day's  work  —  " 

"  Under  cover  of  the  dark." 

"  He  doesn't  run  any  risk  of  annoying  people  by  as 
sembling  in  the  streets." 

"  Weedie  doesn't  want  any  decent  man  to  know  his 
game,  whatever  his  game  is." 

"  I  won't  answer  that,  Jeffrey.  But  I  feel  bound  to 
say  you  are  ungenerous.  You've  an  old  grudge  against 


244  THE  PRISONER 

Weedon  Moore.  You  all  have,  all  you  boys  who  were 
brought  up  with  him.  So  you  break  up  the  meeting." 

"  Now,  see  here,  Amabel,"  said  Jeff,  u  we  haven't  a 
grudge  against  him.  Anyhow,  leave  me  out.  Take  a  fel 
low  like  Alston  Choate.  If  he's  got  a  grudge  against 
Moore,  doesn't  it  mean  something?  " 

"  You  hated  him  when  you  were  boys,"  said  Amabel. 
"  Those  things  last.  Nothing  is  so  hard  to  kill  as  preju 
dice." 

"  As  to  the  other  night,"  said  Jeffrey,  "  I  give  you  my 
word  it  was  as  great  a  surprise  to  me  as  it  was  to  Moore. 
I  hadn't  the  slightest  intention  of  breaking  up  the 
meeting." 

"  Yet  you  went  there  and  you  took  that  impossible 
Martha  Beattie  with  you  —  " 

"  Patricia,  not  Martha." 

"  I  have  nothing  to  do  with  names  she  assumed  for  the 
stage.  She  was  Martha  Shepherd  when  she  lived  in  Ad- 
dington.  No  doubt  she  is  entitled  to  be  called  Beattie; 
but  Martha  is  her  Christian  name." 

"  Now  you're  malicious  yourself,"  said  Jeff,  enjoying 
the  human  warmth  of  her.  "  I  never  knew  you  to  be  so 
hateful.  Why  can't  you  live  and  let  live?  If  I'm  to  let 
your  Weedie  alone,  can't  you  keep  your  hands  off  poor  old 
Madame  Beattie?" 

Miss  Amabel  turned  upon  him  a  look  where  just  reproof 
struggled  with  wounded  pride. 

"  Jeffrey,  I  didn't  think  you'd  be  insincere  with  me." 

"  Hang  it,  Amabel,  I'm  not.  You're  one  of  the  few 
unbroken  idols  I've  got.  Sterling  down  to  the  toes. 
Didn't  you  know  it  ?  " 

"  And  yet  you  did  take  Madame  Beattie  to  Moore's 
rally." 

"  Rally?     So  that's  what  he  calls  it." 


THE  PRISONER  245 

"  And  you  did  prompt  her  to  talk  to  those  men  in  their 
language  —  several  languages,  I  understand,  quick  as 
lightning,  one  after  the  other  —  and  to  say  things  that 
counteracted  at  once  all  Mr.  Moore's  influence." 

"  Now,"  said  Jeffrey,  in  a  high  degree  of  interest,  "  we're 
getting  somewhere.  What  did  I  say  to  them?  What 
did  I  say  through  Madame  Beattie  ?  " 

"  We  don't  know." 

"  Ask  Moore." 

"  Mr.  Moore  doesn't  know." 

"  He  can  ask  his  interpreter,  can't  he?  " 

"Andrea?     He  won't  tell." 

Jeffrey  released  his  knees  and  lay  back  against  the 
bench.  He  gave  a  hoot  of  delighted  laughter,  and  Lydia, 
watching  them  from  the  window,  thought  of  Miss  Amabel 
with  a  wistful  envy  and  wondered  how  she  did  it. 

"  Weedie's  own  henchman  won't  go  back  on  her,"  he 
exclaimed,  in  an  incredulous  pleasure.  "  Now  what  spell 
has  that  extraordinary  old  woman  over  the  south  of 
Europe?  " 

"South  of  Europe?" 

"  Why,  yes,  the  population  you've  got  here.  It's  south 
of  Europe  chiefly,  isn't  it?  eastern  Europe?  —  the  part 
Weedie  hasn't  turned  into  ward  politicians  yet.  Who  is 
Andrea?  This  is  the  first  time  I  have  heard  his  honourable 
name.  Weedon's  interpreter." 

"  He  has  the  fruit  store  on  Mill  Street." 

"  Ah !  Amabel,  do  you  know  what  this  interview  has  done 
for  me?  It's  given  me  a  perfectly  overwhelming  desire 
to  speak  the  tongues." 

"  Foreign  languages,  Jeff?  " 

"  Any  language  that  will  help  me  beat  Weedie  at  his 
game,  or  give  me  a  look  at  the  cards  old  Madame  Beattie 
holds.  I  feel  a  fool.  Why  can't  I  know  what  they're 


246  THE  PRISONER 

talking  about  when  they  can  kick  up  row  enough  under  my 
very  nose  to  make  you  come  and  rag  me  like  this  ?  " 

"  Jeff,"  said  Miss  Amabel,  "  unless  you  are  prepared  to 
go  into  social  work  seriously  and  see  things  as  Mr.  Moore 
sees  them  —  " 

Jeff  gave  a  little  crow  of  derision  and  she  coloured. 
"  It  wouldn't  hurt  you,  Jeff,  to  see  some  things  as  he  does. 
The  necessity  of  getting  into  touch  with  our  foreign  popu 
lation  —  " 

"  I'll  do  that  all  right,"  said  Jeffrey.  «  That's  pre 
cisely  what  I  mean.  I'm  going  to  learn  foreign  tongues 
and  talk  to  'em." 

"  They  say  Madame  Beattie  speaks  a  dozen  or  so  and 
I  don't  know  how  many  dialects." 

"  Oh,  I  can't  compete  with  Madame  Beattie.  She's  got 
the  devil  on  her  side." 

Miss  Amabel  rose  to  her  feet  and  stood  regarding  him 
sorrowfully.  He  looked  up  at  her  with  a  glance  full  of 
affection,  yet  too  merry  for  her  heavy  mood.  Then  he 
got  on  his  feet  and  took  her  parasol. 

"  You  haven't  noticed  the  corn,"  said  he.  "  Don't  you 
know  you  must  praise  the  work  of  a  man's  hands?  " 

"  I  don't  know  whether  it's  a  good  thing  for  you  or 
not,"  said  she.  "  Yes,  it  must  have  been,  so  far.  You're 
tanned." 

"  I  feel  fit  enough." 

"  You  don't  look  over  twenty." 

"  Oh,  I'm  over  twenty,  thank  you,"  said  Jeff.  A 
shadow  settled  on  his  face;  it  even  touched  his  eyes,  mys 
teriously,  and  dulled  them.  "  I'm  not  tanned  all  through." 

"  But  you're  only  doing  this  for  a  time?  " 

"  I  don't  know,  Amabel.  I  give  you  my  word  I  don't 
know  the  next  step  after  to-day  —  or  this  hill  of  corn  — 


or  that." 


THE  PRISONER  247 

"  If  you  wanted  capital,  Jeff  —  " 

He  took  up  a  fold  of  her  little  shoulder  ruffle  and  put  it 
to  his  lips,  and  Ljdia  saw  and  wondered. 

"  No,  dear,"  said  he.  "  I  sha'n't  need  your  money. 
Only  don't  you  let  Weedie  have  it,  to  muddle  away  in 
politics." 

She  was  turning  at  the  edge  of  the  corn  and  looking 
at  him  perplexedly.  Her  mission  hadn't  succeeded,  but 
she  loved  him  and  wanted  to  make  that  manifest. 

"  I  can't  bear  to  have  you  doing  irresponsible  things 
with  Madame  Beattie.  She's  not  fit  —  " 

"  Not  fit  for  me  to  play  with?  Madame  Beattie  won't 
hurt  me." 

"  She  may  hurt  Lydia." 

"  Lydia  1 " 

The  word  leaped  out  of  some  deep  responsiveness  she 
did  not  understand. 

"  Don't  you  know  how  much  they  are  together  ?  They 
go  driving." 

"Well,  what's  that?  Madame  Beattie's  a  good  old 
sport.  She  won't  harm  Lydia." 

But  instead  of  keeping  up  his  work,  he  went  on  to  the 
house  with  her.  Miss  Amabel  would  not  go  in  and  when 
he  had  said  good-bye  to  her  —  affectionately,  charmingly, 
as  if  to  assure  her  that,  after  all,  she  needn't  fear  him  even 
with  Weedie  who  wasn't  important  enough  to  slay  —  he 
entered  the  house  in  definite  search  of  Lydia.  He  went 
to  the  library,  and  there  she  was,  in  the  window  niche, 
where  she  sat  to  watch  him.  Day  by  day  Lydia  sat  there 
when  he  was  in  the  garden  and  she  was  not  busy  and  he 
knew  it  was  a  favourite  seat  of  hers  for,  glancing  over  his 
rows  of  corn,  he  could  see  the  top  of  her  head  bent  over  a 
book.  He  did  not  know  how  long  she  pored  over  a  page 
with  eyes  that  saw  him,  a  wraith  of  him  hovering  over  the 


248  THE  PRISONER 

print,  nor  that  when  their  passionate  depths  grew  hungrier 
for  the  actual  sight  of  him,  how  she  threw  one  glance  at 
his  working  figure  and  bent  to  her  book  again.  As  he 
came  suddenly  in  upon  her  she  sprang  up  and  faced  him, 
the  book  closed  upon  a  trembling  finger. 

"  Lydia,"  said  he,  "  you're  great  chums  with  Madame 
Beattie,  aren't  you?  " 

Lydia  gave  a  little  sigh  of  a  relief  she  hardly  under 
stood.  What  she  expected  him  to  ask  her  she  did  not 
know,  but  there  were  strange  warm  feelings  in  her  heart 
she  would  not  have  shown  to  Jeff.  She  could  have  shown 
them  before  that  minute  —  when  he  had  said  the  thing 
that  ought  not  even  to  be  remembered :  "  I  only  love 
you."  Before  that,  she  thought,  she  had  been  quite  sim 
ply  his  sister.  Now  she  was  a  watchful  servitor  of  a  more 
fervid  sort.  Jeffrey  thought  she  was  afraid  of  being 
scolded  about  her  queer  old  crony. 

"  Sit  down,"  he  said.  "  There's  nothing  to  be  ashamed 
of  in  liking  Madame  Beattie.  You  do  like  her,  don't 
you?" 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Lydia.     "  I  like  her  very  much." 

She  had  sunk  back  in  her  chair  and  closed  the  book 
though  she  kept  it  in  her  lap.  Jeffrey  sat  astride  a  chair 
and  folded  his  arms  on  the  top.  Some  of  the  blinds  had 
been  closed  to  keep  out  the  heat,  and  the  dusk  hid  the  deep, 
crisp  lines  of  his  face.  Under  his  moist  tossed  hair  it 
was  a  young  face,  as  Miss  Amabel  had  told  him,  and  his 
attitude  became  a  boy. 

"  Lydia,"  said  he,  "  what  do  you  two  talk  about?  " 

"  Madame  Beattie  and  I?  "  " 

"  Yes.  In  those  long  drives,  for  instance,  what  do  you 
say?" 

Lydia  looked  at  him,  her  eyes  narrowed  slightly,  and 
Jeffrey  knew  she  did  not  want  to  tell.  When  Esther  didn't 


THE  PRISONER  249 

want  to  tell,  a  certain  soft  glaze  came  over  her  eyes. 
Jeffrey  had  seen  the  glaze  for  a  number  of  years  before  he 
knew  what  it  meant.  And  when  he  found  out,  though  it 
had  been  a  good  deal  of  a  shock,  he  hardly  thought  the 
worse  of  Esther.  He  generalised  quite  freely  and  con 
cluded  that  you  couldn't  expect  the  same  standards  of 
women  as  from  men ;  and  after  that  he  was  a  little  nervous 
and  rather  careful  about  the  questions  he  asked.  But 
Lydia's  eyes  had  no  glaze.  They  were  desperate  rather, 
the  eyes  of  a  little  wild  thing  that  is  going  to  be  frightened 
and  possibly  caught.  Jeffrey  felt  quite  excited,  he  was  so 
curious  to  know  what  form  the  lie  would  take. 

"  Politics,"  said  Lydia. 

Jeffrey  broke  out  into  a  laugh. 

"Oh,  come  off!"  said  he.  "Politics.  Not  much  you 
don't." 

Lydia  laughed,  too,  in  a  sudden  relief  and  pleasure. 
She  didn't  like  her  lie,  it  seemed. 

"  No,"  said  she,  "  we  don't.  But  I  tell  Anne  if  people 
ask  questions  it's  at  their  own  risk.  They  must  take 
what  they  get." 

"  Anne  wouldn't  tell  a  lie,"  said  Jeffrey. 

She  flared  up  at  him. 

"  I  wouldn't  either.  I  never  o!o.  You  took  me  by  sur 
prise." 

"  Does  Madame  Beattie  talk  to  you  about  her  life 
abroad?" 

He  ventured  this.  But  she  was  gazing  at  him  in  the 
clearest  candour. 

"  Oh,  no." 
I      "About  what,  Lydia?     Tell  me.     It  bothers  me." 

"  Did  Miss  Amabel  bother  you  ?  "  The  charming  face 
was  fiery. 

"I  don't  need  Amabel  to  tell  me  you're  taking  long 


2SO  THE  PRISONER 

drives  with  Madame  Beattie.  She's  a  battered  old  party, 
Lydia.  She's  seen  lots  of  things  you  don't  want  even  to 
hear  about." 

She  was  gazing  at  him  now  in  quite  a  dignified  surprise. 

"  If  you  mean  things  that  are  not  nice,"  she  said,  "  I 
shouldn't  listen  to  them.  But  she  wouldn't  want  me  to. 
Madame  Beattie  is  — "  She  saw  no  adequate  way  to  put 
it. 

But  Jeffrey  understood  her.  He,  too,  believed  Madame 
Beattie  had  a  decency  of  her  own. 

"  Never  mind,"  said  he.  "  Only  I  want  to  keep  you  as 
you  are.  So  would  father.  And  Anne." 

Lydia  sat  straight  in  her  chair,  her  cheeks  scarlet  from 
excitement,  her  eyes  speaking  with  the  full  power  of  their 
limpid  beauty.  What  if  she  were  to  tell  him  how  they 
talked  of  Esther  and  her  cruelty,  and  of  him  and  his  mis 
fortunes,  and  of  the  need  of  his  at  once  setting  out  to  re 
construct  his  life?  But  it  would  not  do.  This  youth  here 
astride  the  chair  didn't  seem  like  the  Jeff  who  was  woven 
into  all  she  could  imagine  of  tragedy  and  pain.  He  looked 
like  the  Jeff  she  had  heard  the  colonel  tell  about,  who  had 
been  reckless  and  impulsive  and  splendid,  and  had  been 
believed  in  always  and  then  had  grown  up  into  a  man  who 
made  and  lost  money  and  was  punished  for  it.  He  was 
speaking  now  in  his  new  coaxing  voice. 

"  There's  one  thing  you  could  tell  me.  That  wouldn't 
do  any  harm." 

"What?"  asked  Lydia. 

"  Your  old  crony  must  have  mentioned  the  night  we  ran 
away  with  Weedon  Moore's  automobile." 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Lydia.  Her  eyes  were  eloquent  now. 
"  She  told  me." 

"  Did  she  tell  you  what  she  said  to  Weedon's  crowd,  to 


THE  PRISONER  251 

turn  them  round  like  a  flock  of  sheep  and  bring  them  over 
to  us?" 

"  Oh,  yes,  she  told  me." 

"What  was  it?" 

But  Lydia  again  looked  obstinate,  though  she  ventured 
a  little  plea  of  her  own. 

"  Jeff,  you  must  go  into  politics." 

"  Not  on  your  life." 

"  The  way  is  all  prepared." 

"  Who  prepared  it?     Madame  Beattie?  " 

"  You  are  going,"  said  Lydia,  this  irrepressibly  and 
against  her  judgment,  "  to  be  the  most  popular  man  in 
Addington." 

"  Gammon !  "  This  he  didn't  think  very  much  of.  If 
this  was  how  Lydia  and  Madame  Beattie  spent  their  hours 
of  talk,  let  them,  the  innocents.  It  did  nobody  harm. 
But  he  was  still  conscious  of  a  strong  desire :  to  protect 
Lydia,  in  her  child's  innocence,  from  evil.  He  wondered  if 
she  were  not  busy  enough,  that  she  had  time  to  take  up 
Madame  Beattie.  Yet  she  and  Anne  seemed  as  industrious 
as  little  ants. 

"  Lydia,"  said  he,  "  what  if  I  should  have  an  Italian 
fruit-seller  come  up  here  to  the  house  and  teach  Italian 
to  you  and  me  —  and  maybe  Anne  ?  " 

"  Andrea  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  Do  you  know  him?  " 

"  Madame  Beattie  does."  She  coloured  slightly,  as  if  all 
Madame  Beattie's  little  secrets  were  to  be  guarded. 

"  We'll  have  him  up  here  if  he'll  come,  and  we'll  learn  to 
pass  the  bread  in  Italian.  Shall  we  ?  " 

"  I'd  love  to,"  said  Lydia.  "  We're  learning  now,  Anne 
and  I." 

"Of  Andrea?" 


THE  PRISONER 

"  Oh,  no.  But  we're  picking  up  words  as  fast  as  we  can, 
all  kinds  of  dialects.  From  the  classes,  you  know,  Miss 
Amabel's  classes.  It's  ridiculous  to  be  seeing  these 
foreigners  twice  a  week  and  not  understand  them  or  not 
have  them  half  understand  us." 

"  It's  ridiculous  anyway,"  said  Jeffrey  absently.  He 
was  regarding  the  shine  on  Lydia's  brown  hair.  "  What's 
the  use  of  Addington's  being  overrun  with  Italy  and  Greece 
and  Poland  and  Russia?  We  could  get  men  enough  to 
work  in  the  shops,  good  straight  stock." 

"  Well,"  said  Lydia  conclusively,  "  we've  got  them  now. 
They're  here.  So  we  might  as  well  learn  to  understand 
them  and  make  them  understand  us." 

Jeff  smiled  at  her,  the  little  soft  young  thing  who 
seemed  so  practical.  Lydia  looked  like  a  child,  but  she 
spoke  like  the  calm  house  mother  who  had  had  quartered 
on  her  a  larger  family  than  the  house  would  hold  and  yet 
knew  the  invaders  must  be  accommodated  in  decent  com 
fort  somewhere.  He  sat  there  and  stared  at  her  until  she 
grew  red  and  fidgety.  He  seemed  to  be  questioning  some 
thing  in  her  inner  mind. 

"What  is  it?"  she  asked. 

"  Nothing,"  said  Jeff,  and  got  up  and  went  away  to  his 
own  room.  He  had  been  thinking  of  her  clear  beauties  of 
simple  youthful  outline  and  pure  restraints,  and  wondering 
why  the  world  wasn't  made  so  that  he  could  take  her  little 
brown  hand  in  his  and  walk  off  with  her  and  sit  all  day 
on  a  piney  bank  and  listen  to  birds  and  find  out  what  she 
thought  about  the  prettiness  of  things.  She  was  not  his 
sister,  she  was  not  his  child,  though  the  child  in  her  so 
persuaded  him ;  and  in  spite  of  the  dewy  memory  of  her 
kiss  she  could  not  be  his  love.  Yet  she  was  most  dear  to 
him. 

He  threw  himself  down  on  the  sofa  and  clasped  his  hands 


THE  PRISONER  253 

under  his  head,  and  he  laughed  suddenly  because  he  was 
taking  refuge  in  the  thought  of  Esther.  That  Esther 
had  become  sanctuary  from  his  thoughts  of  Lydia  was  an 
ironic  fact  indeed,  enough  to  make  mirth  crack  its  cheeks. 
But  since  he  was  bound  to  Esther,  the  more  he  thought  of 
her  the  better.  He  was  not  consciously  comparing  them, 
the  child  Lydia  and  the  equipped  siren,  to  Esther's  harm. 
Only  he  knew  at  last  what  Esther  was.  She  was  Circe  on 
her  island.  Its  lights  hung  high  above  the  wave,  the 
sound  of  its  music  beat  across  the  foam.  Reardon  heard 
the  music;  so  did  Alston  Choate.  Jeffrey  knew  that,  in 
the  one  time  he  had  heard  Choate  speak  of  her,  a  time  when 
he  had  been  in  a  way  compelled  to ;  and  though  it  was  the 
simplest  commonplace,  something  new  was  beating  in  his 
voice.  Choate  had  heard  Esther's  music,  he  had  seen  the 
dancing  lights,  and  Esther  had  been  willing  he  and  all  men 
should.  There  was  no  mariner  who  sailed  the  seas  so  in 
significant  as  not  to  be  hailed  by  Esther.  That  was  the 
trouble.  Circe's  isle  was  there,  and  she  was  glad  they 
knew  it.  Jeffrey  did  not  go  so  far  as  to  think  she  wanted 
inevitably  to  turn  them  into  beasts,  but  he  knew  she  was 
virtually  telling  them  she  had  the  power.  That  had  been 
one  of  the  first  horrors  of  his  disenchantment,  when  she 
had  placed  herself  far  enough  away  from  him  by  neither 
writing  to  him  nor  visiting  him ;  then  he  had  seen  her  out 
side  the  glamour  of  her  presence.  Once  he  had  been  proud 
when  the  eyes  of  all  men  followed  her.  That  was  in  the 
day  of  his  lust  for  power  and  life,  when  her  empery 
seemed  equal  in  degree  to  his.  Something  brutal  used  to 
come  up  in  him  when  men  looked  boldly  at  her,  and  while 
he  wanted  to  quench  the  assault  of  their  hot  eyes  it  was 
always  with  the  equal  brutality :  "  She's  mine."  That 
was  while  he  thought  she  walked  unconscious  of  the  insult. 
But  when  he  knew  she  called  it  tribute,  a  rage  more  just 


THE  PRISONER 

than  jealousy  came  up  in  him,  and  he  hated  something 
in  her  as  he  hated  the  men  desiring  her. 

Yet  now  the  thought  of  her  was  his  refuge.  She  was 
not  his,  but  he  was  hers  to  the  end  of  earthly  time.  There 
was  no  task  for  him  to  do  but  somehow  to  shield  Lydia 
from  the  welling  of  her  wonderful  devotion  to  him.  If 
Esther  was  Circe  on  her  island,  Lydia  was  the  nymph  in 
a  clear  mountain  brook  of  some  undiscovered  wood  where 
the  birds  came  to  bathe,  but  no  hoof  had  ever  muddied  the 
streams.  If  she  had,  out  of  her  hero-worship,  conceived 
a  passion  for  him,  he  had  an  equal  passion  for  her,  of 
protectingness  and  sad  certainty  that  he  could  do  no  better 
than  ensure  her  distance  from  him. 


XXIII 

Jeffrey,  in  his  working  clothes,  went  down  to  Mill  Street 
and  found  Andrea  presiding  over  a  shop  exhaling  the  odour 
of  pineapple  and  entrancing  to  the  eye,  with  its  piled 
ovals  and  spheres  of  red  and  yellow,  its  diversities  of  hue 
and  surface.  It  was  a  fruit  shop,  and  God  had  made  the 
fruit  beautiful  and  Andrea  had  disposed  it  so.  His  wife, 
too,  was  there,  a  round,  dark  creature  in  a  plaid  skirt 
and  a  shirt  waist  with  islands  of  lace  over  a  full  bosom, 
her  black  hair  braided  and  put  round  and  round  her  head, 
and  a  saving  touch  of  long  earrings  to  tell  you  she  was 
still  all  peasant  underneath.  A  soft  round-faced  boy  was 
in  charge,  and  ran  out  to  tell  Jeffrey  prices.  But  they  all 
knew  him.  Jeffrey  felt  the  puzzle  begin  all  over  when 
Andrea  came  hurrying  out,  like  a  genial  host  at  an  inn, 
hands  outstretched,  and  his  wife  followed  him.  They 
looked  even  adoring,  and  again  Jeffrey  wondered,  so  droll 
was  their  excess  of  welcome,  if  he  were  going  to  be  em 
braced.  The  boy,  too,  was  radiant,  and,  like  an  acolyte 
at  some  ritual,  more  humbly  though  exquisitely  proffered 
his  own  fit  portion  of  worship.  Jeffrey,  it  being  the  least 
he  could  offer,  shook  hands  all  round.  Then  he  asked 
Andrea : 

"  Who  do  you  think  I  am?  What  did  Madame  Beattie 
tell  you?" 

Andrea  spread  his  hands  dramatically,  palms  outward, 
and  implied  brokenly  that  though  he  understood  English 
he  did  not  speak  it  to  such  an  extent  as  would  warrant 

him  in  trying  to  explain  what  was  best  left  alone.     He 

255 


256  THE  PRISONER 

would  only  repeat  a  word  over  and  over,  always  with  an 
access  of  affection,  and  when  Jeffrey  asked: 

"  Does  that  mean  '  prisoner  '  ?  "  he  owned  it  did.  It 
seemed  to  hold  for  the  three  the  sum  of  human  perfecti 
bility.  Jeffrey  was  The  Prisoner,  and  therefore  they  loved 
him.  He  gave  up  trying  to  find  out  more;  it  seemed  to 
him  he  could  guess  the  riddle  better  if  he  had  a  word  or  two 
of  Andrea's  language  to  help  him,  and  he  asked  summarily 
if  they  couldn't  have  some  lessons  together.  Wouldn't 
Andrea  come  up  to  the  house  and  talk  Italian?  Andrea 
blossomed  out  in  gleam  of  teeth  and  incredible  shininess 
of  eyes.  He  would  come.  That  night?  Yes,  he  would 
come  that  night.  So  Jeffrey  shook  hands  again  all  round 
and  went  away,  curiously  ill  at  ease  until  he  had  turned 
the  corner ;  the  warmth  of  their  adoration  seemed  burning 
into  his  back. 

But  that  night  Andrea  did  not  come.  The  family  had 
assembled,  Anne  a  little  timid  before  new  learning,  Lydia 
sitting  on  the  edge  of  her  chair  determined  to  be  phe 
nomenal  because  Jeffrey  must  be  pleased,  and  even  Mary 
Nellen  with  writing  pads  and  pencils  at  the  table  to  scrape 
up  such  of  the  linguistic  leavings  as  they  might.  At  nine 
o'clock  the  general  attention '  began  to  relax,  and  Lydia 
widely  yawned.  Jeffrey,  looking  at  her,  caught  the  soft 
redness  of  her  mouth  and  thought,  forgetful  of  Circe's 
island  where  he  had  taken  refuge,  how  sweet  the  little 
barbarian  was. 

But  nobody  next  day  could  tell  him  why  Andrea  had 
not  come,  not  even  Andrea  himself.  Jeffrey  sought  him 
out  at  the  fruit-stand  and  Andrea  again  shone  with  wel 
come.  But  he  implied,  in  painfully  halting  English,  that 
he  could  not  give  lessons  at  all.  Nor  could  any  of  his 
countrymen  in  Addington. 

Jeffrey  gtopd  upon  no  cermony  with  him. 


THE  PRISONER  257 

"  Why  the  devil,"  said  he,  "  do  you  talk  to  me  as  if 
you'd  begun  English  yesterday?  You  forget  I've  heard 
you  translating  bunkum  up  on  the  circus-ground." 

Andrea's  eyes  shone  the  more  enchantingly.  He  was 
shameless,  though.  He  took  nothing  back,  and  even  of 
fered  Jeffrey  an  enormous  pineapple,  with  the  air  of 
wanting  to  show  his  good-will  and  expecting  it  to  be 
received  with  an  equal  open-heartedness.  Jeffrey  walked 
away  with  the  pineapple,  beaten,  and  reflecting  soberly, 
his  brow  tightened  into  a  knot.  Things  were  going  on 
just  outside  his  horizon,  and  he  wasn't  to  know.  Who  did 
know?  Madame  Beattie,  certainly.  The  old  witch  was 
at  the  bottom  of  it.  She  had,  for  purposes  of  her  own, 
wound  the  foreign  population  round  her  finger,  and  she 
was  going  to  unwind  them  when  the  time  came  to  spin  a 
web.  A  web  of  many  colours,  he  knew  it  would  be,  doubt 
less  strong  in  some  spots  and  snarled  in  others.  Madame 
Beattie  was  not  the  person  to  spin  a  web  of  ordinary  life. 

He  went  on  in  his  blue  working  clothes,  absently  taking 
off  his  hat  to  the  ladies  he  met  who  looked  inquiringly  at 
him  and  then  quite  eagerly  bowed.  Jeff  was  impatient  of 
these  recognitions.  The  ladies  were  even  too  gracious. 
They  were  anxious  to  stand  by  him  in  the  old  Addington 
way,  and  as  for  him,  he  wanted  chiefly  to  hoe  his  corn  and 
live  unseen.  But  his  feet  did  not  take  him  home.  They 
led  him  down  the  street  and  up  the  stairs  into  Alston 
Choate's  office,  and  there,  hugging  his  pineapple,  he  en 
tered,  and  found  Alston  sitting  by  the  window  in  the  after 
noon  light,  his  feet  on  a  chair  and  a  novel  in  his  hand. 
This  back  window  of  the  office  looked  down  over  the  river, 
and  beyond  a  line  of  willows  to  peaceful  flats,  and  now  the 
low  sun  was  touching  up  the  scene  with  afternoon  peace. 
Alston,  at  sight  of  him,  took  his  legs  down  promptly.  He, 
too,  was  more  eager  in  welcome  because  Jeffrey  was  a 


258  THE  PRISONER 

marked  figure,  and  went  so  seldom  up  other  men's  stairs. 
Alston  threw  his  book  on  the  table,  and  Jeffrey  set  his 
pineapple  beside  it. 

"  There's  a  breeze  over  here,"  said  Alston,  and  they 
took  chairs  by  the  window. 

For  a  minute  Jeffrey  looked  out  over  the  low-lying  scene. 
He  drew  a  quick  breath.  This  was  the  first  time  he  had 
overlooked  the  old  playground  since  he  had  left  Addington 
for  his  grown-up  life. 

"  We  used  to  sail  the  old  scow  down  there,"  he  said. 
"Remember?" 

Choate  nodded. 

"  She's  down  there  now  in  one  of  the  yards,  filled  with 
red  geraniums." 

They  sat  for  a  while  in  the  silence  of  men  who  find  it 
unexpectedly  restful  to  be  together  and  need  not  even  say 
so.  Yet  they  were  not  here  at  all.  They  were  boys  of 
Addington,  trotting  along  side  by  side  in  the  inherited 
games  of  Addington.  Alston  offered  Jeffrey  a  smoke,  and 
Jeff  refused  it. 

"  See  here,"  said  he,  "  what's  Madame  Beattie  up  to?  " 

Choate  turned  a  startled  glance  on  him.  He  did  not 
see  how  Jeffrey,  a  stranger  in  his  wife's  house,  should  know 
anything  at  all  was  up. 

"  She's  been  making  things  rather  lively,"  he  owned. 
"Who  told  you?" 

"  Told  me  ?  I  was  in  it,  at  the  beginning.  She  and  I 
drove  out  by  chance,  to  hear  Moore  doing  his  stunt  in  the 
circus-ground.  That  began  it.  But  now,  it  seems,  she's 
got  some  devil's  influence  over  Moore's  gang.  She's  told 
'em  something  queer  about  me." 

"  She's  told  'em  something  that  makes  things  infernally 
uncomfortable  for  other  people,"  said  Choate  bluntly. 


THE  PRISONER  259 

"  Did  you  know  she  had  squads  of  them  —  Italians,  Poles, 
Abyssinians,  for  all  I  know,  playing  on  dulcimers  —  she's 
had  them  come  up  at  night  and  visit  her  in  her  bedroom. 
They  jabber  and  hoot  and  smoke,  I  believe.  She's  es 
tablished  an  informal  club  —  in  that  house." 

Alston's  irritation  was  extreme.  It  was  true  Addington 
to  refer  to  foreign  tongues  as  jabber,  and  "  that  house  ", 
Jeffrey  saw,  was  a  stiff  paraphase  for  Esther's  dwelling- 
place.  He  perceived  here  the  same  angry  partisanship 
Reardon  had  betrayed.  This  was  the  jealous  fire  kindled 
invariably  in  men  at  Esther's  name. 

"  How  do  you  know?  "  he  asked. 

Alston  hesitated.  He  looked,  not  abashed,  but  worried, 
as  if  he  did  not  see  precisely  the  road  of  good  manners  in 
giving  a  man  more  news  about  his  wife  than  the  man  was 
able  to  get  by  himself. 

"  Did  Esther  tell  you?  "  Jeff  inquired. 

"  Yes.     She  told  me." 

"When?" 

"  Several  times.  She  has  been  very  uncomfortable. 
She  has  needed  counsel." 

Choate  had  gone  on  piling  up  what  might  have  been 
excuses  for  Esther,  from  an  irritated  sense  that  he  was 
being  too  closely  cross-examined.  He  had  done  a  good 
deal  of  it  himself  in  the  way  of  his  profession,  and  he  was 
aware  that  it  always  led  to  conclusions  the  victim  had  not 
foreseen  and  was  seldom  willing  to  face.  And  he  had  in 
his  mind  not  wholly  recognised  yet  unwelcome  feelings 
about  Esther.  They  were  not  feelings  such  as  he  would 
have  allowed  himself  if  he  had  known  her  as  a  young 
woman  living  with  her  husband  in  the  accepted  way.  He 
did  not  permit  himself  to  state  that  Esther  herself  might 
not,  in  that  case,  have  mingled  for  him  the  atmosphere 


260  THE  PRISONER 

she  breathed  about  him  now.  But  Jeffrey  did  not  pursue 
the  dangerous  road  of  too  great  candour.  He  veered,  and 
asked,  as  if  that  might  settle  a  good  many  questions : 

"  What's  the  matter  with  this  town,  anyway?  " 

"  Addington?  "  said  Choate.     "  You  find  it  changed?  " 

"  Changed !  I  believe  you.  Addington  used  to  be  a 
perfect  picture  —  like  a  summer  landscape  —  you  know 
the  kind.  You  walked  into  the  picture  the  minute  you 
heard  the  name  of  Addington.  It  was  full  of  nice  trees 
and  had  a  stream  and  cows  with  yellow  light  on  them. 
When  you  got  into  Addington  you  could  take  a  long 
breath." 

For  the  first  time  in  his  talk  with  anybody  since  he 
came  home  Jeff  was  feeling  lubricated.  He  couldn't  ex 
press  himself  carelessly  to  his  father,  who  took  him  with  a 
pathetic  seriousness,  nor  to  the  girls,  to  whom  he  was  that 
horribly  uncomfortable  effigy,  a  hero.  But  here  was  an 
other  fellow  who,  he  would  have  said,  didn't  care  a  hang, 
and  Jeff  could  talk  to  him. 

"  There's  no  such  picture  now,"  Alston  assured  him. 
"  The  Addington  we  knew  was  Victorian." 

"Yes.  It  hadn't  changed  in  fifty  years.  What's  it 
changing  for  now?  " 

"  My  dear  boy,"  said  Alston  seriously,  because  he  had 
got  on  one  of  his  own  hobbies  that  he  couldn't  ride  in 
Addington  for  fear  of  knocking  ladies  off  their  legs,  "  don't 
you  know  what's  changing  the  entire  world?  It's  the  birth 
of  compassion." 

"  Compassion?  " 

"  Yes.  Sympathy,  ruth,  pity.  I  looked  up  the  syn 
onyms  the  other  day.  But  we're  at  the  crude,  early  stages 
of  it,  and  it's  devilish  uncomfortable.  Everybody's  so 
sorry  for  everybody  that  we  can't  tell  the  kitchen  maid 
to  scour  the  knives  without  explaining." 


THE  PRISONER  261 

Jeff  was  rather  bewildered. 

"  Are  we  so  compassionate  as  all  that  ?  "  he  asked. 

"  Not  really.  It's  my  impression  most  of  us  aren't 
compassionate  at  all." 

"  Amabel  is." 

"  Oh,  yes,  Amabel  and  Francis  of  Assisi  and  a  few 
others.  But  the  rest  of  us  have  caught  the  patter  and 
it  makes  us  *  feel  good  '.  We  wallow  in  it.  We  feel  warm 
and  self-righteous  —  comfy,  mother  says,  when  she  wants 
to  tuck  me  up  at  night  same  as  she  used  to  after  I'd  been 
in  swimming  and  got  licked.  Yes,  we're  compassionate 
and  we  feel  comfy." 

"But  what's  Weedon  Moore  got  to  do  with  it?  Is 
Weedie  compassionate?  " 

"  Oh,  Weedie's  working  Amabel  and  telling  the  mill 
hands  they're  great  fellows  and  very  much  abused  and 
ought  to  own  the  earth.  Weedie  wants  their  votes." 

"  Then  Weedie  is  up  for  office?  Amabel  told  me  so,  but 
I  didn't  think  Addington'd  stand  for  it.  Time  was  when, 
if  a  man  like  Weedie  had  put  up  his  head,  nobody'd  have 
taken  the  trouble  to  bash  it.  We  should  have  laughed." 

"  We  don't  laugh  now,"  said  Choate  gravely.  There 
was  even  warning  in  his  voice.  "  Not  since  Weedie  and 
his  like  have  told  the  working  class  it  owns  the  earth." 

"And  doesn't  it?" 

"  Yes.  In  numbers.  It  can  vote  itself  right  into  de 
struction  —  which  is  what  it's  doing." 

"  And  Weedie  wants  to  be  mayor." 

"  God  knows  what  he  wants.  Mayor,  and  then  gover 
nor  and  —  I  wouldn't  undertake  to  say  where  Weedie'd 
be  willing  to  stop.  Not  short  of  an  ambassadorship." 

"  Choate,"  said  Jeffrey  cheerfully,  "  you're  an  alarm 
ist." 

"  Oh,  no,  I'm  not.     A  man  like  Weedie  can  get  any- 


262  THE  PRISONER 

where,  because  he's  no  scruples  and  he  can  rake  in  mere 
numbers  to  back  him.  And  it's  all  right.  This  is  a  de 
mocracy.  If  the  majority  of  the  people  want  a  demagogue 
to  rule  over  them,  they've  a  perfect  right  to  go  to  the 
devil  their  own  way." 

"  But  where's  he  get  his  infernal  influence  ?  Weedie 
Moore ! " 

"  He  gets  it  by  telling  every  man  what  the  man  wants 
to  hear.  He  gets  hold  of  the  ignorant  alien,  and  tells  him 
he  is  a  king  in  his  own  right.  He  tells  him  Weedie'll  get 
him  shorter  and  shorter  hours,  and  make  him  a  present 
of  the  machinery  he  runs  —  or  let  him  break  it  —  and  the 
poor  devil  believes  him.  Weedie  has  told  him  that's  the 
kind  of  a  country  this  is.  And  nobody  else  is  taking 
the  trouble  to  tell  him  anything  else." 

"  Well,  for  God's  sake,  why  don't  they?  " 

"  Because  we're  riddled  with  compassion,  I  tell  you. 
If  we  see  a  man  poorer  than  we  are,  we  get  so  apologetic 
we  send  him  bouquets  —  our  women  do." 

"  Is  that  what  the  women  here  are  doing?  " 

"  Oh,  yes.  If  there's  a  strike  over  at  Long  Meadow 
they  put  on  their  furs  and  go  over  and  call  on  a  few 
operatives  and  find  eight  living  in  one  room,  in  a  happy 
thrift,  and  they  come  back  and  hold  an  indignation  meet 
ing  and  '  protest '." 

"  You're  not  precisely  a  sentimentalist,  are  you  ?  "  said 
Jeff.  He  was  seeing  Choate  in  the  new  Addington  as 
Choate  presented  it. 

"  No,  by  George  !  I  want  to  see  things  clarified  and  the 
good  old-fashioned  virtues  come  back  into  their  place  — 
justice  and  common-sense.  Compassion  is  something  to 
die  for.  But  you  can't  build  states  out  of  it  alone.  It 
makes  me  sick  —  sick,  when  I  see  men  getting  dry-rot." 

Jeff's  face  was  a  map  of  dark  emotion.     His  mind  went 


THE  PRISONER  263 

back  over  the  past  years.  He  had  not  been  made  soft  by 
the  nemesis  that  laid  him  by  the  heels.  He  had  been  ter 
ribly  hardened  in  some  ways,  so  calloused  that  it  sometimes 
seemed  to  him  he  had  not  the  actual  nerve  surface  for  feel 
ing  anything.  The  lambent  glow  of  beauty  might  fall 
upon  him  unheeded ;  even  its  lightnings  might  not  penetrate 
his  shell.  But  that  had  been  better  than  the  dry-rot  of 
an  escape  from  righteous  punishment. 

"  You  know,  Choate,"  said  he,  "  I  believe  the  first  thing 
for  a  man  to  learn  is  that  he  can't  dodge  penalties." 

"  I  believe  you.  Though  if  he  dodges,  he  doesn't  get 
off.  That's  the  other  penalty,  rot  inside  the  rind.  All 
the  palliatives  in  the  world  —  the  lying  securities  and 
false  peace  —  all  of  them  together  aren't  worth  the  muscle 
of  one  man  going  out  to  bang  another  man  for  just 
cause.  And  getting  banged !  " 

Jeff  was  looking  at  him  quizzically. 

"  Where  do  you  live,"  said  he,  <c  in  the  new  Addington 
or  the  old  one?  " 

Choate  answered  rather  wearily,  as  if  he  had  asked  him 
self  that  question  and  found  the  answer  disheartening. 

"  Don't  know.  Guess  I'm  a  non-resident  everywhere. 
I  curse  about  Addington  by  the  hour  —  the  new  Adding 
ton.  But  it's  come,  and  come  to  stay." 

"  You  going  to  let  Moore  administer  it?  " 

"  If  he's  elected." 

"  He  can't  be  elected.  We  won't  have  it.  What  you 
going  to  do  ?  " 

"  Nothing,  in  politics,"  said  Alston.  "  They're  too  vile 
for  a  decent  man  to  touch." 

Jeffrey  thought  he  had  heard  the  sound  of  that  before. 
Even  in  the  older  days  there  had  been  some  among  the 
ultra-conservative  who  refused  to  pollute  their  ideals  by 
dropping  a  ballot.  But  it  hadn't  mattered  much  then. 


264  THE  PRISONER 

Public  government  had  been  as  dual  in  its  nature  as  good 
and  evil,  sometimes  swaying  to  the  side  of  one  party, 
sometimes  the  other ;  but  always,  such  had  been  tradition 
ary  influence,  the  best  man  of  a  party  had  been  nominated. 
Then  there  was  no  talk  of  Weedon  Moores. 

"  Do  you  suppose  Weedie's  going  on  with  his  circus- 
ground  rallies  ?  "  he  asked. 

"  They  say  not." 

"Who?" 

"  Oh,  I've  kept  a  pretty  close  inquiry  afoot.  I'm  told 
the  men  won't  go." 

"Why  not?" 

"  Madame  Beattie  won't  let  them." 

"  The  devil  she  won't !     What's  the  old  witch's  spell?  " 

"I  don't  know.  Esther — "  he  caught  himself  up  — 
"  Mrs.  Blake  doesn't  know.  She  only  knows,  as  I  tell 
you,  the  men  come  to  the  house,  and  talk  things  over.  And 
I  hear  from  reliable  sources,  Weedie  summons  them  and 
the  men  simply  won't  go.  So  I  assume  Madame  Beattie 
forbids  it." 

"  It's  not  possible."  Jeff  had  withdrawn  his  gaze  from 
the  old  playground  and  sat  staring  thoughtfully  at  his 
legs,  stretched  to  their  fullest  length.  "  I  rather  wish  I 
could  talk  with  her,"  he  said,  "  Madame  Beattie.  I  don't 
see  how  I  can  though,  unless  I  go  there." 

"  Jeff,"  said  Alston,  earnestly,  "  you  mustn't  do  that." 

He  spoke  unguardedly,  and  now  that  the  words  were 
out,  he  would  have  recalled  them.  But  he  made  the  best 
of  a  rash  matter,  and  when  Jeff  frowned  up  at  him,  met 
the  look  with  one  as  steady. 

"  Why  mustn't  I?  "  asked  Jeff. 

It  was  very  quietly  said. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  Choate  answered.  "  I  spoke  on 
impulse." 


THE  PRISONER  265 

"  Yes.     But  I  think  you'd  better  go  on." 

Alston  kept  silence.  He  was  looking  out  of  the  window 
now,  pale  and  immovably  obstinate. 

"  Do  you,  by  any  chance,"  said  Jeff,  "  think  Esther  is 
afraid  of  me  ?  " 

Choate  faced  round  upon  him,  immediately  grateful  to 
him. 

"  That's  it,"  he  said.  "  You've  said  it.  And  since  it's 
so,  and  you  recognise  it,  why,  you  see,  Jeff,  you  really 
mustn't,  you  know." 

"Mustn't  go  there?"  said  Jeff  almost  foolishly,  the 
thing  seemed  to  him  so  queer.  "  Mustn't  see  my  wife,  be 
cause  she  says  she  is  afraid  of  me?  " 

u  Because  she  is  afraid  of  you,"  corrected  Choate  im 
pulsively,  in  what  he  might  have  told  himself  was  his  lik 
ing  for  the  right  word.  But  he  had  a  savage  satisfaction 
in  saying  it.  For  the  instant  it  made  it  seem  as  if  he  were 
defending  Esther. 

"  I'd  give  a  good  deal,"  said  Jeff  slowly,  "  to  hear  just 
how  Esther  told  you  she  was  afraid  of  me.  When  was  it, 
for  example?  " 

"  It  was  at  no  one  time,"  said  Choate  unwillingly.  Yet 
it  seemed  to  him  Jeff  did  deserve  candour  at  all  their 
hands. 

"  You  mean  it's  been  a  good  many  times  ?  " 

"  I  mean  I've  been,  in  a  way,  her  adviser  since  —  " 

"  Since  I've  been  in  jail.  That's  very  good  of  you, 
Choate.  But  do  you  gather  Esther  has  told  other  people 
she  is  afraid  of  me,  or  that  she  has  told  you  only  ?  " 

"  Why,  man,"  said  Choate  impatiently,  "  I  tell  you 
I've  been  her  adviser.  Our  relations  are  those  of  client 
and  counsel.  Of  course  she's  said  it  to  nobody  but  me." 

"  Not  to  Reardon,"  Jeff's  inner  voice  was  commenting 
satirically.  "  What  would  you  think  if  you  knew  she  had 


266  THE  PRISONER 

said  it  to  Reardon,  too?  And  how  many  more?  She 
has  spun  her  pretty  web,  and  you're  a  prisoner.  So  is 
Reardon.  You've  each  a  special  web.  You  are  not  al 
lowed  to  meet." 

He  laughed  out,  and  Alston  looked  at  him  in  a  sudden 
offence.  It  seemed  to  Alston  that  he  had  been  sacrificing 
all  sorts  of  delicacies  that  Jeff  might  be  justly  used,  and 
the  laugh  belittled  them  both.  But  Jeff  at  that  instant 
saw,  not  Alston,  but  a  new  vision  of  life.  It  might  have 
been  that  a  tide  had  rushed  in  and  wiped  away  even  the 
prints  of  Esther's  little  feet.  It  might  have  been  that 
a  wind  blew  in  at  the  windows  of  his  mind  and  beat  its 
great  wings  in  the  corners  of  it  and  winnowed  out  the 
chaff.  As  he  saw  life  then  his  judgments  softened  and  his 
irritations  cooled.  Nothing  was  left  but  the  vision  of  life 
itself,  the  uncomprehended  beneficence,  the  consoler,  the 
illimitable  beauty  we  look  in  the  face  and  do  not  see.  For 
an  instant  perhaps  he  had  caught  the  true  proportions  of 
things  and  knew  at  last  what  was  worth  weeping  over  and 
what  was  matter  for  a  healthy  mirth.  It  was  all  mirth 
perhaps,  this  show  of  things  Lord  God  had  set  us  in.  He 
had  not  meant  us  to  take  it  dumbly.  He  had  hoped  we 
should  see  at  every  turn  how  queer  it  is,  and  yet  how  or 
derly,  and  get  our  comfort  out  of  that.  He  had  put 
laughter  behind  every  door  we  open,  to  welcome  us.  Grief 
was  there,  too,  but  if  we  fully  understood  Lord  God  and 
His  world,  there  would  be  no  grief:  only  patience  and  a 
gay  waiting  on  His  time.  And  all  this  came  out  of  seeing 
Alston  Choate,  who  thought  he  was  a  free  man,  hobbled 
by  Esther's  web. 

Jeffrey  got  up  and  Alston  looked  at  him  in  some  concern, 
he  was  so  queer,  flushed,  laughing  a  little,  and  with  a  wan 
dering  eye.  At  the  door  he  stopped. 

"  About  Weedie,"  he  said.     "  We  shall  have  to  do  some- 


THE  PRISONER  267 

thing  to  Weedie.  Something  radical.  He's  not  going 
to  be  mayor  of  Addington.  And  I  rather  think  you'll 
have  to  get  into  politics.  You'd  be  mayor  yourself  if 
you'd  get  busy." 

Jeffrey  had  no  impulse  to-day  to  go  and  ask  Esther  if 
she  were  afraid  of  him  as  he  had  when  Reardon  told  him 
the  same  tale.  He  wasn't  thinking  of  Esther  now.  He 
was  hugging  his  idea  to  his  breast  and  hurrying  with  it, 
either  to  entrust  it  to  somebody  or  to  wrap  it  up  in  the 
safety  of  pen  and  ink  while  it  was  so  warm.  And  when  he 
got  home  he  came  on  Lydia,  sitting  on  the  front  steps, 
singing  to  herself  and  cuddling  a  kitten  in  the  curve  of  her 
arm.  Lydia  with  no  cares,  either  of  the  house  or  her 
dancing  class  or  Jeff's  future,  but  given  up  to  the  idleness 
of  a  summer  afternoon,  was  one  of  the  most  pleasing  sights 
ever  put  into  the  hollow  of  a  lovely  world.  Jeffrey  saw 
her,  as  he  was  to  see  everything  now,  through  the  medium 
of  his  new  knowledge.  He  saw  to  her  heart  and  found  how 
sweet  it  was,  and  how  full  of  love  for  him.  He  saw  Circe's 
island,  and  knew,  since  the  international  codes  hold  good, 
he  must  remember  his  allegiance  to  it.  He  still  owned 
property  there;  he  must  pay  his  taxes.  But  this  Eden's 
garden  which  was  Lydia  was  his  chosen  home.  He  was 
glad  to  see  it  so.  He  must,  he  knew,  hereafter  see  things 
as  they  are.  And  they  would  not  be  tragic  to  him.  They 
would  be  curious  and  funny  and  dear:  for  they  all  wore 
the  mantle  of  life.  He  sat  down  on  a  lower  step,  and 
Lydia  looked  at  him  gravely,  yet  with  pleasure,  too. 

"  Lydia,"  said  he,  "  do  you  know  what  they're  calling 
me,  these  foreigners  Madame  Beattie's  training  with?  " 

She  nodded. 

"  The  Prisoner,"  said  Jeff.  "  That's  what  I  am  —  The 
Prisoner." 

She  hastened  to  reassure  him. 


268  THE  PRISONER 

"  They  don't  do  it  to  be  hateful.  It's  in  love.  That's 
what  they  mean  it  in  —  love." 

Jeff  made  a  little  gesture  of  the  hand,  as  if  he  tossed  off 
something  so  lightly  won. 

(t  Never  mind  how  they  mean  it.  That's  not  what  I'm 
coming  to.  It's  that  they  call  me  The  Prisoner.  Well, 
ten  minutes  ago  it  just  occurred  to  me  that  we're  all 
prisoners.  I  saw  it  as  it  might  be  a  picture  of  life  and 
all  of  us  moving  in  it.  Alston  Choate's  a  prisoner  to 
Esther.  So's  Reardon.  Only  it's  not  to  Esther  they're 
prisoners.  It's  to  the  big  force  behind  her,  the  sorcery  of 
nature,  don't  you  see?  Blind  nature." 

She  was  looking  at  him  with  the  terrified  patience  of  one 
compelled  to  listen  and  yet  afraid  of  hearing  what 
threatens  the  safe  crystal  of  her  own  bright  dream:  that 
apprehensive  look  of  woman,  patient  in  listening,  but  be 
seeching  the  speaker  voicelessly  not  to  kill  warm  personal 
certainties  with  the  abstractions  he  thinks  he  has  dis 
covered.  Jeffrey  did  not  understand  the  look.  He  was 
enamoured  of  his  abstraction. 

"  And  all  the  mill  hands  have  been  slaves  to  Weedon 
Moore  because  he  told  them  lies,  and  now  they're  prisoners 
to  Madame  Beattie  because  she's  telling  them  another  kind 
of  lie,  God  knows  what.  And  Addington  is  prisoner  to 
catch-words." 

"  But  what  are  we  prisoner  to?  "  Lydia  asked  sharply, 
as  if  these  things  were  terrifying.  "  Is  Farvie  a  pris 
oner?  " 

"  Why,  father,  God  bless  him !  "  said  Jeff,  moved  at  once, 
remembering  what  his  father  had  to  fight,  "  he's  prisoner 
to  his  fear  of  death." 

"And  Anne?  and  I?" 

Jeff  sat  looking  at  her  in  an  abstracted  thoughtfulness. 

"Anne?"    he    repeated.     "You?     I    don't    know.     I 


THE  PRISONER  269 

shouldn't  dare  to  say.  I've  no  rights  over  Anne.  She's 
so  good  I'm  shy  of  her.  But  if  I  find  you're  a  prisoner, 
Lydia,  I  mean  you  shall  be  liberated.  If  nature  drives 
you  on  as  it  drives  the  rest  of  us  to  worship  something 
—  somebody  —  blindly,  and  he's  not  worth  it,  you  bet 
your  life  I'll  save  you." 

She  leaned  back  against  the  step  above,  her  face  sud 
denly  sick  and  miserable.  What  if  she  didn't  want  to  be 
saved?  the  sick  face  asked  him.  Lydia  was  a  truth-teller. 
She  loved  Jeff,  and  she  plainly  owned  it  to  herself  and 
felt  surprisingly  at  ease  over  it.  She  was  born  to  the 
dictates  of  nice  tradition,  but  when  that  inner  warmth  told 
her  she  loved  Jeff,  even  though  he  was  bound  to  Esther, 
she  didn't  even  hear  tradition,  if  it  spoke.  All  she  could 
possibly  do  for  Jeff,  who  unconsciously  appealed  to  her 
every  instant  he  looked  at  her  with  that  deep  frown  be 
tween  his  brows,  seemed  little  indeed.  Should  she  say  she 
loved  him?  That  would  be  easy.  But  were  his  generali 
ties  about  life  strong  enough  to  push  her  and  her  humilities 
aside?  That  was  hard  to  bear. 

"  And,"  he  was  saying,  "  once  we  know  we're  prisoners, 
We  can  be  free." 

"  How  ?  "  said  Lydia  hopefully.  "  Can  we  do  the  things 
we  like?" 

"  No,  by  God !  there's  only  one  way  of  getting  free,  and 
that's  by  putting  yourself  under  the  law." 

Lydia's  heart  fell  beyond  plummet's  sounding.  She  did 
not  want  to  put  herself  under  any  stricter  law  than  that  of 
heart's  devotion.  She  had  been  listening  to  it  a  great 
deal,  of  late.  They  were  sweet  things  it  told  her,  and  not 
wicked  things,  she  thought,  but  all  of  humble  service  and 
unasked  rewards. 

Jeff  was  roaming  on,  beguiled  by  his  new  thoughts  ami 
the  sound  of  his  own  voice. 


270  THE  PRISONER 

"  It's  perfectly  true  what  I  used  to  write  in  that  beg 
garly  prison  paper.  The  only  way  to  be  really  free  is  to 
be  bound  —  by  law.  It's  the  big  paradox.  Do  you  know 
what  I'm  going  to  do?  " 

She  shook  her  head.  He  was  probably,  her  apprehen 
sive  look  said,  going  to  do  something  that  would  take  him 
out  of  the  pretty  paradise  where  she  longed  to  set  him 
galloping  on  the  road  to  things  men  ought  to  have. 

"  I  am  going  in  to  tear  up  the  stuff  I'm  writing  about 
that  man  I  knew  there  in  the  prison.  What  does  God  Al 
mighty  care  about  him?  I'm  going  to  write  a  book  and 
call  it  '  Prisoners,'  and  show  how  I  was  a  prisoner  my 
self,  to  money,  and  luxury,  and  the  game  and  — "  he 
would  not  mention  Esther,  but  Lydia  knew  where  his  mind 
stumbled  over  the  thought  of  her  —  "  and  how  I  got  my 
medicine.  And  how  other  fellows  will  have  to  take  theirs, 
these  fellows  Weedie's  gulling  and  Addington,  because  it's 
a  fool  wrapped  up  in  its  own  conceit  and  stroking  the 
lion's  cub  till  it's  grown  big  enough  to  eat  us." 

He  got  up  and  Lydia  called  to  him: 

"  What  is  the  lion's  cub?  " 

"  Why,  it's  the  people.  And  Weedon  Moore  is  show 
ing  it  how  hungry  it  is  by  chucking  the  raw  meat  at  it 
and  the  saucers  of  blood.  And  pretty  soon  it'll  eat  us 
and  eat  Weedie  too." 

He  went  in  and  up  the  stairs  and  Lydia  fancied  she 
iheard  the  tearing  of  papers  in  his  room. 


XXIV 

The  dry  branch  has  come  alive.  The  young  Jeff  Lydia 
had  known  through  Farvie  was  here,  miraculously  full  of 
hope  and  laughter.  Jeff  was  as  different  after  that  day 
as  a  man  could  be  if  he  had  been  buried  and  revived  and 
cast  his  grave-clothes  off.  He  measured  everything  by 
his  new  idea  and  the  answers  came  out  pat.  The  creative 
impulse  shot  up  in  him  and  grew.  He  knew  what  it  was 
to  be  a  prisoner  under  penalty,  every  cruel  phase  of  it ;  and 
now  that  he  saw  everybody  else  in  bonds,  one  to  an  un 
balanced  law  of  life  we  call  our  destiny,  one  to  cant,  one 
to  greed,  one  to  untended  impulse,  he  was  afire  to  let  the 
prisoners  out.  If  they  knew  they  were  bound  they  could 
throw  off  these  besetments  of  mortality  and  walk  in  beauty. 
Old  Addington,  the  beloved,  must  free  herself.  Too  long 
had  she  been  held  by  the  traditions  she  had  erected  into 
forms  of  worship.  The  traditions  lasted  still,  though  now 
nobody  truly  believed  in  them.  She  was  beating  her 
shawms  and  cymbals  in  the  old  way,  but  to  a  new  tune, 
and  the  tune  was  not  the  song  of  liberty,  he  believed,  but  a 
child's  lullaby.  In  that  older  time  she  had  decently  cov 
ered  discomfiting  facts,  asserted  that  she  believed  revealed 
religion,  and  blessed  God,  in  an  ingenuous  candour,  for  set 
ting  her  feet  in  paths  where  she  could  walk  decorously. 
But  now  that  she  was  really  considering  new  gods  he 
wanted  her  to  take  herself  in  hand  and  find  out  what  she 
really  worshipped.  What  was  God  and  what  was  Baal? 
Had  she  the  nerve  to  burn  her  sacrifices  and  see?  He  be 
gan  to  understand  her  better  every  day  he  lived  with  her, 

271 


272  THE  PRISONER 

Poor  old  Addington!  she  had  been  suddenly  assaulted  by 
the  clamour  of  the  times ;  it  told  her  shameful  things  were 
happening,  and  she  had,  with  her  old  duteous  responsive 
ness,  snatched  at  remedies.  The  rich,  she  found,  had 
robbed  the  poor.  Therefore  let  there  be  no  more 
poverty,  though  not  on  that  account  less  riches.  And 
here  the  demagogue  arose  and  bade  her  shirk  no  issue, 
even  the  red  flag.  God  Himself,  the  demagogue  informed 
her,  gives  in  His  march  of  time  spectacular  illustration  of 
temporal  vanity.  The  earthquake  ruins  us,  the  flood  en 
gulfs  us,  fire  and  water  are  His  ministers  to  level  the  pomp 
of  power.  Therefore,  said  the  demagogue,  forget  the 
sweet  abidingness  of  home,  the  brooding  peace  of  edifices, 
the  symbolic  uses  of  matter  to  show  us,  though  we  live 
but  in  tents  of  a  night,  that  therein  is  a  sign  of  the  Eternal 
City.  Down  with  property.  Addington  had  learned  to 
distrust  one  sort  of  individual,  and  she  instantly  believed 
she  could  trust  the  other  individual  who  was  as  unlike  him 
as  possible.  Because  Dives  had  been  numb  to  human 
needs,  Lazarus  was  the  new-discovered  leader.  And  the 
pitiful  part  of  it  all  was  that  though  Addington  used  the 
alphabet  and  spoke  the  language  of  "  social  unrest  ",  it 
did  it  merely  with  the  relish  of  playing  with  a  new  thing. 
It  didn't  make  a  jot  of  difference  in  its  daily  living.  It 
didn't  exert  itself  over  its  local  government,  it  didn't  see 
the  Weedon  Moores  were  honeycombing  the  soil  with  sedi 
tion.  It  talked,  and  talked,  and  knew  the  earth  would  last 
its  time. 

When  Jeffrey  tore  up  the  life  of  his  fellow  prisoner  he 
did  it  as  if  he  tore  his  own  past  with  itt  He  sat  down  to 
write  his  new  book  which  was,  in  a  way,  an  autobiog 
raphy.  He  had  read  the  enduring  ones.  He  used  to 
think  they  were  crudely  honest,  and  he  meant  now  to 
tell  the  truth  as  brutally  as  the  older  men:  how,  in  his 


THE  PRISONER  273 

seething  youth,  when  he  scarcely  knew  the  face  of  evil  in 
his  arrogant  confidence  that  he  was  strong  enough  to  ride 
it  bareback  without  falling  off,  if  it  would  bring  him  to  his 
ends,  he  leaped  into  the  money  game.  And  at  that  point, 
he  owned  ingenuously,  he  would  have  to  be  briefly  insin 
cere.  He  could  unroll  his  own  past,  but  not  Esther's. 
The  minute  the  stage  needed  her  he  realised  he  could  never 
summon  her.  He  might  betray  himself,  not  her.  It  was 
she,  the  voice  incarnate  of  greed  and  sensuous  delight, 
that  had  whipped  him  along  his  breathless  course,  and  now 
he  had  to  conceal  her  behind  a  wilful  lie  and  say  they  were 
his  own  delights  that  lured  him. 

He  sat  there  in  his  room  writing  on  fiery  nights  when 
the  moths  crowded  outside  the  screen  and  small  sounds 
urged  the  freedom  and  soft  beguilement  of  the  season,  even 
in  the  bounds  of  streets.  The  colonel,  downstairs,  sat  in 
a  determined  patience  over  Mary  Nellen's  linguistic  knots, 
what  time  he  was  awake  long  enough  to  tackle  them, 
and  wished  Jeff  would  bring  down  his  work  where  he  could 
be  glanced  at  occasionally  even  if  he  were  not  to  be  spoken 
to.  The  colonel  had  thought  he  wanted  nothing  but  to 
efface  himself  for  his  son,  and  yet  the  yearning  of  life 
within  him  made  him  desire  to  live  a  little  longer  even  by 
sapping  that  young  energy.  Only  Lydia  knew  what  Jeff 
was  doing,  and  she  gloried  in  it.  He  was  writing  a  book, 
mysterious  work  to  her  who  could  only  compass  notes  of 
social  import,  and  even  then  had  some  ado  to  spell.  But 
she  read  his  progress  by  the  light  in  his  eyes,  his  free 
bearing  and  his  broken  silence.  For  now  Jeff  talked.  He 
talked  a  great  deal.  He  chaffed  his  father  and  even  Anne, 
and  left  Lydia  out,  to  her  own  pain.  Why  should  he 
have  kissed  her  that  long  ago  day  if  he  didn't  love  her, 
and  why  shouldn't  he  have  kept  on  loving  her?  Lydia 
was  asking  herself  the  oldest  question  in  the  woman's  book 


THE  PRISONER 

of  life,  and  nobody  had  told  her  that  nature  only  had  the 
answer.  "If  you  didn't  mean  it  why  did  you  do  it?" 
This  was  the  question  Lydia  heard  no  answer  to. 

Jeff  was  perpetually  dwelling  upon  Addington,  torn 
between  the  factions  of  the  new  and  old.  He  asked  Lydia 
seriously  what  she  should  recommend  doing,  to  make  good 
citizens  out  of  bamboozled  aliens.  Lydia  had  but  one 
answer.  She  should,  she  said,  teach  them  to  dance.  Then 
you  could  get  acquainted  with  them.  You  couldn't  get 
acquainted  if  you  set  them  down  to  language  lessons  or 
religious  teaching,  or  tried  to  make  them  read  the  Con 
stitution.  If  people  had  some  fun  together,  Lydia 
thought,  they  pretty  soon  got  to  understand  one  another 
because  they  were  doing  a  thing  they  liked,  and  one 
couldn't  do  it  so  well  alone.  That  was  her  recipe.  Jeff 
didn't  take  much  stock  in  it.  He  was  not  wise  enough 
to  remember  how  eloquent  are  the  mouths  of  babes.  He 
went  to  Miss  Amabel  as  being  an  expert  in  sympathy,  and 
found  her  shy  of  him.  She  was  on  the  veranda,  shelling 
peas,  and  in  her  checked  muslin  with  father's  portrait 
braided  round  with  mother's  hair  pinning  together  her 
embroidered  collar.  To  Jeff,  clad  in  his  blue  working- 
clothes,  she  looked  like  motherhood  and  sainthood  blended. 
He  sat  himself  down  on  the  lower  step,  clasped  his  knees 
and  watched  her,  following  the  movements  of  her  plump 
hands. 

"  We  can't  get  too  homesick  for  old  Addington  while 
we  have  you  to  look  at,"  said  he. 

She  stopped  working  for  one  pod's  space  and  looked  at 
him. 

"  Are  you  homesick  for  old  Addington  ?  "  she  asked. 
"  Alston  Choate  says  that.  He  says  it's  a  homesick 
world." 

"  He's  dead  right,"  said  Jeff. 


THE  PRISONER  275 

"What  do  you  want  of  old  Addington? "  said  she. 
"  What  do  we  need  we  haven't  got?  " 

Jeff  thought  of  several  words,  but  they  wouldn't 
answer.  Beauty?  No,  old  Addington  was  oftener  funny 
than  not.  There  was  no  beauty  in  a  pint-pot.  Even 
the  echoes  there  rang  thin.  Peace?  But  he  was  the  last 
man  to  go  to  sleep  over  the  task  of  the  day. 

"I  just  want  old  Addington,"  he  said.  "Anyway  I 
want  to  drop  in  to  it  as  you'd  drop  into  the  movies.  I 
want  to  hestitate  on  the  brink  of  doing  things  that  shock 
people.  Nobody's  shocked  at  anything  now.  I  want  to 
see  the  blush  of  modesty.  Amabel,  it's  all  faded  out." 

She  looked  at  him,  distressed. 

"  Jeff,"  said  she,  "  do  you  think  our  young  people  are 
not  —  what  they  were  ?  " 

He  loved  her  beautiful  indirection. 

"  I  don't  want  'em  to  be  what  they  were,"  said  he,  "  if 
they  have  to  lie  to  do  it.  I  don't  know  exactly  what  I  do 
want.  Only  I'm  homesick  for  old  Addington.  Amabel, 
what  should  you  say  to  my  going  into  kindergarten 
work?" 

"  You  always  did  joke  me,"  said  she.  "  Get  a  rise  out 
of  me?  Is  that  what  you  call  it?  " 

"  I'm  as  sober  as  an  owl,"  said  Jeff.  "  I  want  these 
pesky  Poles  and  Syrians  and  all  the  rest  of  them  to  learn 
what  they're  up  against  when  they  come  over  here  to  run 
the  government.  I'm  on  the  verge,  Amabel,  of  hiring  a 
hall  and  an  interpreter,  and  teaching  'em  something 
about  American  history,  if  there's  anything  to  teach  that 
isn't  disgraceful." 

"  And  yet,"  said  she,  "  when  Weedon  Moore  talks  to 
those  same  men  you  go  and  break  up  the  meeting." 

"  But  bless  you,  dear  old  girl,"  said  Jeff,  "  Weedon  was 
teaching  'em  the  rules  for  wearing  the  red  flag.  And  I'm 


!»7<>  THK   I'KISONKR 

going  to  give  'em  a  straight  tip  about  Old  Glory.  When 
I've  got  through  with  'em,  you  won't  know  'em  from  New 
Knglandcrs  dyed  in  the  wool." 

She  meditated. 

"  If  only  you  and  Weedon  would  talk  it  over,"  she  ven- 
turcd,  k*  and  combine  vour  forces.  You're  both  so  clever, 
Jeff." 

**  Combine  with  Weedie?  Not  on  your  life.  Why,  I'm 
Wecdie's  antidote.  He  preaches  riot  and  sedition,  and 
I'm  the  dose  taken  as  soon  as  vou  ean  get  it  down.*' 

Then  she  looked  at  him,  though  affectionately,  in  sad 
doubt,  and  Jeff  saw  he  had,  in  some  way,  been  supplanted 
in  her  confidence  though  not  in  her  affection.  He  wouldn't 
push  it.  Amabel  was  too  precious  to  be  lost  for  kinder 
garten  work. 

When  they  bad  talked  a  little  more,  but  about  topics 
less  dangerous,  the  garden  and  the  drought,  he  went  away; 
but  Amabel  padded  after  him,  howl  in  hand. 

**  Jeff."  said  she.  '*  you  must  let  me  say  how  glad  I  am 
you  and  Weedon  are  really  seeing  things  from  the  same 
point  of  vie"  ." 

**  Don't  make  any  mistake  about  that,**  said  Jeff. 
"He's  trying  to  bust  Aldington,  and  I'm  trying  to  save 
it.  And  "to  do  thai  I've  got  to  bust  Weedie  himself." 

He  went  home  then  and  put  his  case  to  Lydia.  and  asked 
her  nhv.  :''  Miss  A'.ya'.v1.  "as  so  wi'.'iy.^  *o  te.ich  the  alien 
boy  to  read  and  teach  the  alien  girl  to  sew,  she  should  be 
so  cold  to  his  pedagogical  ambitions.  Lydia  was  curiously 
irresponsive,  but  at  dusk  she  slipped  away  to  Madame 
Beattie's.  To  Lydia,  what  used  to  be  Esther's  house  had 
now  become  simply  Madame  Beattie's.  She  had  her  own 
shy  way  of  getting  in,  so  that  she  need  not  come  on  Esther 
nor  trouble  the  decotoui  laaid,  Perhaps  Lydia  was  * 


THE  PRISONER  277 

little  afraid  of  Sophy,  who  spoke  so  smoothly  and  looked 
such  cool  hostility.  So  she  tapped  at  the  kitchen  door  and 
a  large  cook  of  sound  principles  who  loved  neither  Esther 
nor  Sophy,  let  her  in  and  passed  her  up  the  back  stairs. 
Esther  had  strangely  never  noted  this  adventurous  way  of 
entering.  She  was  rather  unobservant  about  some  things, 
and  she  would  never  have  suspected  a  lady  born  of  coming 
in  by  the  kitchen  for  any  reason  whatever.  Esther,  too, 
had  some  of  the  Addington  traditions  ingrain. 

Madame  Beattic  was  in  bed,  where  she  usually  was  when 
not  in  mischief,  the  summer  breeze  touching  her  toupee  as 
tenderly  as  it  might  a  young  girl's  flossy  crown.  She 
always  had  a  cool  drink  by  her,  and  she  was  always  reading. 
Sometimes  she  put  out  her  little  ringed  hand  and  moved 
the  glass  to  hear  the  clink  of  ice,  and  she  did  it  now  as 
Lydia  came  in.  Lydia  liked  the  clink.  It  sounded  festive 
to  her.  That  was  the  word  she  had  for  all  the  irrespon 
sible  exuberance  Madame  Beattie  presented  her  with,  of 
boundless  areas  where  you  could  be  gay.  Madame  Beattie 
shut  her  book  and  motioned  to  the  door.  But  Lydia  was 
already  closing  it.  That  was  the  first  thing  when  they 
had  their  gossips.  Lydia  came  then  and  perched  on  the 
foot  of  the  bed.  Her  promotion  from  chair  to  bed  marked 
the  progress  of  their  intimacy. 

"  Madame  Beattie,"  said  she,  "  I  wish  you  and  I  could 
go  abroad  together." 

Madame  Beattie  grinned  at  her,  with  a  perfect  appre 
ciation. 

"  You  wouldn't  like  it,"  said  she. 

"  I  should  like  it,"  said  Lydia.  Yet  she  knew  she  did 
not  want  to  go  abroad.  This  was  only  an  expression  of 
her  pleasure  in  sitting  on  a  bed  and  chatting  with  a  game 
old  lady.  What  she  wanted  was  to  mull  along  here  in 


278  THE  PRISONER 

Addington  with  occasional  side  dashes  into  the  realms  of 
discontent,  and  plan  for  Jeff's  well-being.  "  He  wants 
to  give  lectures,"  said  she.  "  To  them." 

The  foreign  contingent  was  always  known  to  her  and 
Madame  Beattie  as  They. 

"  The  fool !  "  said  Madame  Beattie  cheerfully.  "  What 
for?" 

"  To  teach  them  to  be  good." 

"  What  does  he  want  to  muddle  with  that  for?  " 

66  Why,  Madame  Beattie,  you  know  yourself  you're 
talking  to  them  and  telling  them  things." 

"  But  that  isn't  dressing  'em  in  Governor  Winthrop's 
knee  breeches,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  "  and  making  Puri 
tans  of  'em.  I'm  just  filling  'em  up  with  Jeff  Blake,  so 
they'll  follow  him  and  make  a  ringleader  of  him  whether 
he  wants  it  or  not.  They'll  push  and  push  and  not  see 
they're  pushing,  and  before  he  knows  it  he'll  be  down  stage, 
with  all  his  war-paint  on.  You  never  saw  Jeff  catch  fire." 

"  No,"  said  Lydia,  lying.  The  day  he  took  her  hands 
and  told  her  what  she  still  believed  at  moments  —  he  had 
caught  fire  then. 

"  When  he  catches  fire,  he'll  burn  up  whatever's  at 
hand,"  said  the  old  lady,  with  relish.  "  Get  his  blood 
started,  throw  him  into  politics,  and  in  a  minute  we  shall 
have  him  in  business,  and  playing  the  old  game." 

"  Do  you  want  him  to  play  the  old  game  ?  "  asked 
Lydia. 

"  I  want  him  to  make  some  money." 

"  To  pay  his  creditors." 

"  Pay  your  grandmother !  pay  for  my  necklace.  Lydia, 
I've  scared  her  out  of  her  boots." 

"  Esther?  "  Lydia  whispered. 

Madame  Beattie  whispered,  too,  now,  and  a  cross-light 
played  over  her  eyes. 


THE  PRISONER  279 

"  Yes.  I've  searched  her  room.  And  she  knows  it. 
She  thinks  I'm  searching  for  the  necklace." 

"And  aren't  you?" 

"  Bless  you,  no.  I  shouldn't  find  it.  She's  got  it  safely 
hid.  But  when  she  finds  her  upper  bureau  drawer  gone 
over  —  Esther's  very  methodical  —  and  the  next  day  her 
second  drawer  and  the  next  day  the  shelves  in  her  closet, 
why,  then  — " 

"What  then?  "  asked  Lydia,  breathless. 

"  Then,  my  dear,  she'll  get  so  nervous  she'll  put  the 
necklace  into  a  little  bag  and  tell  me  she  is  called  to  New 
York.  And  she'll  take  the  bag  with  her,  if  she's  not  pre 
vented." 

"What  should  prevent  her?  the  police?" 

"  No,  my  dear,  for  after  all  I  don't  want  the  necklace 
so  much  as  I  want  somebody  to  pay  me  solid  money  for  it. 
But  when  the  little  bag  appears,  this  is  what  I  shall  say 
to  Esther,  perhaps  while  she's  on  her  way  down-stairs  to 
the  carriage.  '  Esther,'  I  shall  say,  6  get  back  to  your 
room  and  take  that  little  bag  with  you.  And  make  up  to 
handsome  Jeff  and  tell  him  he's  got  to  stir  himself  and  pay 
me  something  on  account.  And  you  can  keep  the  dia 
monds,  my  dear,  if  you  see  Jeff  pays  me  something.' ' 

"  She'd  rather  give  you  the  diamonds,"  said  Lydia. 

"  My  dear,  she  sets  her  life  by  them.  Do  you  know 
what  she's  doing  when  she  goes  to  her  room  early  and 
locks  the  door?  She's  sitting  before  the  glass  with  that 
necklace  on,  cursing  God  because  there's  no  man  to  see 
her." 

"  You  can't  know  that,"  said  Lydia. 

She  was  trembling  all  over. 

"  My  dear,  I  know  women.  When  you're  as  old  as  I 
am,  you  will,  too :  even  the  kind  of  woman  Esther  is.  That 
type  hasn't  changed  since  the  creation,  as  they  call  it." 


280  THE  PRISONER 

"  But  I  don't  like  it,"  said  Lydia.  "  I  don't  think  it's 
fair.  She  hates  Jeff  —  " 

"  Nonsense.  She  doesn't  hate  any  man.  Jeff's  poor, 
that's  all." 

"  She  does  hate  him,  and  yet  you're  going  to  make  him 
pay  money  so  she  can  keep  diamond  necklaces  she  never 
ought  to  have  had." 

"  Make  him  pay  money  for  anything,"  said  the  old 
witch  astutely,  "  money  he's  got  or  money  he  hasn't  got. 
Set  his  blood  to  moving,  I  tell  you,  and  before  he  knows  it 
he'll  be  tussling  for  dear  life  and  stamping  on  the  next 
man  and  getting  to  the  top." 

Lydia  didn't  want  him  to  tussle,  but  she  did  want  him 
at  the  top.  She  had  not  told  Madame  Beattie  about  the 
manuscript  growing  and  growing  on  Jeff's  table  every 
night.  It  was  his  secret,  his  and  hers,  she  reasoned ;  she 
hugged  the  knowledge  to  her  heart. 

"  That's  all,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  in  that  royal  way 
of  terminating  interviews  when  she  wanted  to  get  back 
to  literature.  "  Only  when  he  begins  to  address  his  work- 
ingmen  you  tell  me." 

Lydia,  on  her  way  down-stairs,  passed  Esther's  room 
and  even  stood  a  second  breathlessly  taking  in  its  exquisite 
order.  Here  was  the  bower  where  the  enchantress  slept, 
and  where  she  touched  up  her  beauty  by  the  secret  proc 
esses  Lydia,  being  very  young  and  of  a  pollen-like  fresh 
ness,  despised.  This  was  not  just  of  Lydia.  Esther  took 
no  more  than  a  normal  care  of  her  complexion,  and  her 
personal  habits  were  beyond  praise.  Lydia  stood  there 
staring,  her  breath  coming  quick.  Was  the  necklace  really 
there?  If  she  saw  it  what  could  she  do?  If  the  little 
bag  with  the  necklace  inside  it  sat  there  waiting  to  be 
taken  to  New  York,  what  could  she  do  then?  She  fled 
softly  down  the  stairs. 


THE  PRISONER 

Addington  was  a  good  deal  touched  when  Jeffrey  Blake 
took  the  old  town  hall  and  put  a  notice  in  the  paper  saying 
he  would  give  a  talk  there  on  American  History  in  the  ad 
ministration  of  George  Washington.  He  would  speak  in 
English  and  parts  of  the  lecture  would  be  translated,  if 
necessary,  by  an  able  interpreter.  Ladies  considered  seri 
ously  whether  they  ought  not  to  go,  to  encourage  him,  and 
his  father  was  sure  it  was  his  own  right  and  privilege. 
But  Jeff  choked  that  off.  He  settled  the  matter  at  the 
supper  table. 

"  Look  here,"  said  he,  "  I'm  going  down  there  to 
make  an  ass  of  myself.  Don't  you  come.  I  won't  have 
it." 

So  the  three  stayed  at  home,  and  sat  up  for  him  and  he 
told  them,  when  he  came  in,  at  a  little  after  ten,  that 
there  had  been  five  Italians  present  and  one  of  them  had 
slept.  Two  ladies,  deputed  by  the  Woman's  Club,  had 
also  come,  and  he  wished  to  thunder  women  would  mind 
their  business  and  stay  at  home.  But  there  was  the  fight 
ing  glint  in  his  eye.  His  father  remembered  it,  and  Lydia 
was  learning  to  know  it  now.  He  would  give  his  next 
lecture,  he  said,  unless  nobody  was  there  but  the  Woman's 
Club.  He  drew  the  line.  And  next  day  Lydia  slipped 
away  to  Madame  Beattie  and  told  her  the  second  lecture 
would  be  on  the  following  Wednesday  night. 

That  night  Jeff  stood  up  before  his  audience  of  three,  no 
ladies  this  time.  But  Andrea  was  not  there.  Jeff  thought 
a  minute  and  decided  there  was  no  need  of  him. 

"  Will  you  tell  me,"  said  he,  looking  down  from  the 
shallow  platform  at  his  three  men,  "  why  I'm  not  talking 
in  English  anyway?  You  vote,  don't  you?  You  read 
English.  Well,  then,  listen  to  it." 

But  he  was  not  permitted  to  begin  at  once.  There  was 
a  stir  without  and  the  sound  of  feet.  The  door  opened 


THE  PRISONER 

and  men  tramped  in,  men  and  men,  more  than  the  little 
hall  would  hold,  and  packed  themselves  in  the  aisles  and  at 
the  back.  And  with  the  foremost,  one  who  carried  himself 
proudly  as  if  he  were  extremely  honored,  came  Madame 
Beattie  in  a  long-tailed  velvet  gown  with  a  shining  gold 
circlet  across  her  forehead,  and  a  plethora  of  jewels  on  her 
ungloved  hands.  She  kept  straight  on,  and  mounted  the 
platform  beside  Jeff,  and  there  she  bowed  to  her  audience 
and  was  cheered.  When  she  spoke  to  Jeff,  it  was  with  a 
perfect  self-possession,  an  implied  mastery  of  him  and  the 
event. 

"  I'll  interpret." 

After  all,  why  not  fall  in  with  her,  old  mistress  of  guile? 
He  began  quite  robustly  and  thought  he  was  doing  very 
well.  In  twenty  minutes  he  was,  he  thought,  speaking 
excellently.  The  men  were  warmly  pleased.  They  sat 
up  and  smiled  and  glistened  at  him.  Once  he  stopped  short 
and  threw  Madame  Beattie  a  quick  aside. 

"What  are  they  laughing  at?" 

"  I  have  to  put  it  picturesquely,"  said  Madame  Beattie, 
in  a  stately  calm.  "  That's  the  only  way  they'll  under 
stand.  Go  on." 

It  is  said  in  Addington  that  those  lectures  lasted  even 
until  eleven  o'clock  at  night,  and  there  were  petitions  that 
The  Prisoner  should  go  to  the  old  hall  and  talk  every  even 
ing,  instead  of  twice  a  week.  The  Woman's  Club  said 
Madame  Beattie  was  a  dear  to  interpret  for  him,  and  some 
of  the  members  who  had  not  studied  any  language  since 
the  seventies,  when  they  learned  the  rudiments  of  German, 
to  read  Faust,  judged  it  would  be  a  good  idea  to  hear  her 
for  practice.  But  somebody  told  her  that,  and  she  dis 
couraged  it.  She  was  obliged,  she  said,  to  skip  hastily 
from  one  dialect  to  another  and  they  would  only  be  con 
fused  ;  therefore  they  thought  it  better,  after  all,  to  remain 


THE  PRISONER  283 

undisturbed  in  their  respective  calm.  Jeff  sailed  securely 
on  through  Lincoln's  administration  to  the  present  day, 
and  took  up  the  tariff  even,  in  an  elementary  fashion. 
There  he  was  obliged  to  be  drily  technical  at  points, 
and  he  wondered  how  Madame  Beattie  could  accurately 
reproduce  him,  much  less  to  a  response  of  eager  faces. 
But  then  Jeff  knew  she  was  an  old  witch.  He  knew  she 
had  hypnotised  wives  that  hated  her  and  husbands  sworn 
to  cast  her  off.  He  knew  she  had  sung  after  she  had  no 
voice,  and  bamboozled  even  the  critics,  all  but  one  who 
wrote  for  an  evening  paper  and  so  didn't  do  his  notice 
until  next  day.  And  he  saw  no  reason  why  she  should 
not  make  even  the  tariff  a  primrose  path. 

Madame  Beattie  loved  it  all.  Also,  there  was  the  ex 
quisite  pleasure,  when  she  got  home  late,  of  making  Sophy 
let  her  in  and  mix  her  a  refreshing  drink,  and  of  meeting 
Esther  the  next  day  at  dinner  and  telling  her  what  a  good 
house  they  had.  Business,  Madame  Beattie  called  it, 
splendid  business,  and  Esther  hated  her  for  that,  too.  It 
sounded  like  shoes  or  hosiery.  But  Ether  didn't  dare  gain 
say  her,  for  fear  she  would  put  out  a  palmist's  sign,  or  a 
notice  of  seances  at  twenty-five  cents  a  head.  Esther 
knew  she  could  get  no  help  from  grandmother.  When  she 
sought  it,  with  tears  in  her  eyes,  begging  grandmother  to 
turn  the  unprincipled  old  witch  out  for  good,  grand 
mother  only  pulled  the  sheet  up  to  her  ears  and  breathed 
stertorously. 

But  Madame  Beattie  was  tired,  though  this  was  the 
flowering  of  her  later  life. 

"  My  God !  "  she  said  to  Lydia  one  night,  before  getting 
up  to  dress  for  a  lecture,  "  I'm  pretty  nearly  —  what  is 
it  they  call  it  —  all  in  ?  I  may  drop  dead.  I  shouldn't 
wonder  if  I  did.  If  I  do,  you  take  Jeff  into  the  joke. 
Nobody'd  appreciate  it  more  than  Jeff." 


284  THE  PRISONER 

"  You  don't  think  the  men  like  him  the  less  for  it  ?  " 
said  Lydia. 

"  Oh,  God  bless  me,  no.  They  adore  him.  They  think 
he's  a  god  because  he  tells  their  folk  tales  and  their  stories. 
I  give  you  my  word,  Lydia,  I'd  no  idea  I  knew  so  many 
things." 

"  What  did  you  tell  last  night?  "  said  Lydia. 

"  Oh,  stories,  stories,  stories.  To-night  I  may  spice  it 
up  a  little  with  modern  middle-Europe  scandal.  Dear 
souls !  they  love  it." 

"  What  does  Jeff  think  they're  listening  to  ?  "  asked 
Lydia. 

"  The  trusts,  last  time,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "  My 
Holy  Father !  that's  what  he  thinks.  The  trusts !  " 


XXV 

The  colonel  thrived,  about  this  time,  on  that  fallacious 
feeling,  born  of  hope  eternal,  that  he  was  growing  young. 
It  is  one  of  the  precautionary  lies  of  nature,  to  keep  us 
going,  that,  the  instant  we  are  tinkered  in  any  part,  we 
ignore  its  merely  being  fitted  up  for  shortened  use.  Hope 
eternal  tells  us  how  much  stronger  it  is  than  it  was  before. 
If  you  rub  unguent  into  your  scanty  hair  you  can  feel 
it  grow,  as  a  poet  hears  the  grass.  A  nostrum  on  your 
toil-hardened  hands  brings  back,  to  keen  anticipation,  the 
skin  of  youth.  All  mankind  is  prepared  to  a  perfect  de 
gree  of  sensitiveness  for  response  to  the  quack  doctor's  art. 
We  believe  so  fast  that  he  need  hardly  do  more  than  open 
his  mouth  to  cry  his  wares.  The  colonel,  doing  a  good 
day's  work  and  getting  tired  enough  to  sleep  at  night,  felt, 
on  waking,  as  if  life  were  to  last  the  measure  of  his  extrem- 
est  appetite.  The  household  went  on  wings,  so  clever  and 
silent  was  Anne  in  administration  and  so  efficient  Mary 
Nellen.  Only  Anne  was  troubled  in  her  soul  because  Lydia 
would  go  slipping  away  for  these  secret  sessions  with 
Madame  Beattie.  She  even  proposed  going  with  her  once 
or  twice,  but  Lydia  said  she  had  put  it  off  for  that  night ; 
and  next  time  she  slipped  away  more  cleverly.  Once  in 
these  calls  Lydia  met  Esther  at  the  head  of  the  stairs, 
and  they  said  "  How  do  you  do  ?  "  in  an  uncomfortable 
way,  Esther  with  reproving  dignity  and  Lydia  in  a  bravado 
that  looked  like  insolence.  And  then  Esther  sent  for 
Alston  Choate,  and  in  the  evening  he  came. 

Esther  was  a  pathetic  pale  creature,  as  she  met  him  in 

285 


286  THE  PRISONER 

the  dusk  of  the  candle-lighted  room,  little  more  than  a 
child,  he  thought,  as  he  noted  her  round  arms  and  neck 
within  the  film  of  her  white  dress.  Esther  did  not  need  to 
assume  a  pathos  for  the  moment's  needs.  She  was  very 
sorry  for  herself.  They  sat  there  by  the  windows,  looking 
out  under  the  shade  of  the  elms,  and  for  a  little  neither 
spoke.  Esther  had  some  primitive  feminine  impulses  to 
put  down.  Alston  had  an  extreme  of  pity  that  gave  him 
fervencies  of  his  own.  To  Esther  it  was  as  natural  as 
breathing  to  ask  a  man  to  fight  her  battles  for  her,  and  to 
cling  to  him  while  she  told  him  what  battles  were  to  be 
fought.  Alston  had  the  chafed  feeling  of  one  who  cannot 
follow  with  an  unmixed  ardency  the  lines  his  heart  would 
lead  him.  He  was  always  angry,  chiefly  because  she  had  to 
suffer  so,  after  the  hideousness  of  her  undeserved  destiny, 
and  yet  he  saw  no  way  to  help  that  might  not  make  a 
greater  hardship  for  her.  At  last  she  spoke,  using  his 
name,  and  his  heart  leaped  to  it. 

"  Alston,  what  am  I  going  to  do  ?  " 

"  Things  going  badly?  "  he  asked  her,  in  a  voice  moved 
enough  to  hearten  her.  "  What  is  it  that's  different?  " 

"  Eve^thing.  Aunt  Patricia  has  those  horrible  men 
come  here  and  talk  with  her  —  " 

"  It's  ridiculous  of  her,"  said  Alston,  "  but  there's  no 
harm  in  it.  They're  not  a  bad  lot,  and  she's  an  old  lady, 
and  she  won't  stay  here  forever." 

"  Oh,  yes,  she  will.  She  gets  her  food,  at  least,  and  I 
don't  believe  she  could  pay  for  even  that  abroad.  And 
this  sort  of  thing  amuses  her.  It's  like  gipsies  or  circus 
people  or  something.  It's  horrible." 

"  What  does  your  grandmother  say  ?  " 

"Nothing." 

"  She  must  stand  for  it,  in  a  way,  or  Madame  Beattie 
couldn't  do  it." 


THE  PRISONER  287 

"  I  don't  believe  grandmother  understands  fully.  She's 
so  old." 

"  She  isn't  tremendously  old." 

"  Oh,  but  she  looks  so.  When  you  see  her  in  her  night 
cap  —  it's  horrible,  the  whole  thing,  grandmother  and  all, 
and  here  I  am  shut  up  with  it." 

"  I'm  sorry,"  said  Alston,  in  a  low  tone.  "  I'm  devilish 
sorry." 

"  And  I  want  to  go  away,"  said  Esther,  her  voice  rising 
hysterically,  so  that  Alston  nervously  hoped  she  wouldn't 
cry.  "  But  I  can't  do  that.  I  haven't  enough  to  live  on, 
away  from  here,  and  I'm  afraid." 

"  Esther,"  said  he,  daring  at  last  to  bring  out  the  doubt 
that  assailed  him  when  he  mused  over  her  by  himself,  "  just 
what  do  you  mean  by  saying  you  are  afraid?  " 

"  You  know,"  said  Esther,  almost  in  a  whisper.  She 
had  herself  in  hand  now. 

"  Yes.     But  tell  me  again.     Tell  me  explicitly." 

"  I'm  afraid,"  said  Esther,  "  of  him." 

"  Of  your  husband?     If  that's  it,  say  it." 

"  I'm  afraid  of  Jeff.  He's  been  in  here.  I  told  you 
so.  He  took  hold  of  me.  He  dragged  me  by  my  wrists. 
Alston,  how  can  you  make  me  tell  you ! " 

The  appeal  sickened  him.  He  got  up  and  walked  away 
to  the  mantel  where  the  candles  were,  and  stood  there 
leaning  against  the  shelf.  He  heard  her  catch  her  breath, 
and  knew  she  was  near  sobs.  He  came  back  to  his  chair, 
and  his  voice  had  resumed  so  much  of  its  judicial  tone  that 
her  breath  grew  stiller  in  accord. 

"  Esther,"  said  he,  "  you'd  better  tell  me  everything." 

"  I  can't,"  said  she,  "  everything.  You  are  —  "  the 
rest  came  in  a  startling  gush  of  words  —  "  you  are  the 
last  man  I  could  tell." 

It  was  a  confession,  a  surrender,  and  he  felt  the  tre- 


288  THE  PRISONER 

mendous  weight  of  it.  Was  he  the  last  man  she  could  tell? 
Was  she  then,  poor  child,  withholding  herself  from  him  as 
he,  in  decency,  was  aloof  from  her?  He  pulled  himself 
together. 

"  Perhaps  I  can't  do  anything  for  you,"  he  said,  "  in 
my  own  person.  But  I  can  see  that  other  people  do.  I 
can  see  that  you  have  counsel." 

"  Alston,"  said  she,  in  what  seemed  to  him  a  beautiful 
simplicity,  "  why  can't  you  do  anything  for  me?  " 

This  was  so  divinely  childlike  and  direct  that  he  had  to 
tell  her. 

"  Esther,  don't  you  see?  If  you  have  grounds  for  action 
against  your  husband,  could  I  be  the  man  to  try  your 
case?  Could  I?  When  you  have  just  said  I  am  the  last 
man  you  could  tell?  I  can't  get  you  a  divorce  —  "  he 
stopped  there.  He  couldn't  possibly  add,  "  and  then 
marry  you  afterward." 

"  I  see,"  said  Esther,  yet  raging  against  him  inwardly. 
"  You  can't  help  me." 

"  I  can  help  you,"  said  Alston.  "  But  you  must  be 
frank  with  me.  I  must  know  whether  you  have  any  case 
at  all.  Now  answer  me  quite  simply  and  plainly.  Does 
Jeff  support  you?  " 

"  Oh,  no,"  said  Esther. 

66  He  gives  you  no  money  whatever?" 

"  None." 

"  Then  he's  a  bigger  rascal  than  I've  been  able  to  think 
him." 

"  I  believe  —  "  said  Esther,  and  stopped. 

"  What  do  you  believe?  " 

"  I  think  the  money  must  come  from  his  father.  He 
sends  it  to  me." 

"  Then  there  is  money  ?  " 


THE  PRISONER  289 

"  Why,  yes,"  said  Esther  irritably,  "  there's  some 
money,  or  how  could  I  live?  " 

"  But  you  told  me  there  was  none." 

"  How  do  you  think  I  could  live  here  with  grandmother 
and  expect  her  to  dress  me?  Grandmother's  very  old. 
She  doesn't  see  the  need  of  things." 

"  It  isn't  a  question  of  what  you  can  live  on,"  said 
Alston.  "  It's  a  question  of  Jeff's  allowing  you  money,  or 
not  allowing  you  money.  Does  he,  or  does  he  not?  " 

"  His  father  sends  me  some,"  said  Esther,  in  a  voice 
almost  inaudible.  It  sounded  sulky. 

"Regularly?" 

"  Yes,  I  suppose  so." 

"Don't  you  know?" 

"  Yes.     He  sends  it  regularly." 

"How  often?" 

"  Four  times  a  year." 

"  Haven't  you  every  reason  to  believe  that  money  is 
from  Jeff  ?  " 

"  No,"  said  Esther.  "  I  haven't  any  reason  to  think  so 
at  all.  His  father  signs  the  cheques." 

"  Isn't  it  probable  that  his  father  would  do  that  when 
Jeff  was  in  prison,  and  that  he  should  continue  doing  it 
now  ?  " 

Esther  did  not  answer.  There  was  something  in  the 
silence  of  the  room,  something  in  the  peculiar  feel  of  the 
atmosphere  that  made  Alston  certain  she  had  balked.  He 
recognised  that  pause  in  the  human  animal  under  inquisi 
tion,  and  for  a  wonder,  since  he  had  never  been  wound  up 
to  breaking  point  himself,  knew  how  it  felt.  The  ma 
chinery  in  the  brain  had  suddenly  stopped.  He  was  not 
surprised  that  Esther  could  not  go  on.  It  was  not  ob 
stinacy  that  deterred  her.  It  was  panic.  He  had  put 


290  THE  PRISONER 

her,  he  knew,  to  too  harsh  a  test.  Now  he  had  to  soothe 
her  affrighted  mind  and  bring  it  back  to  its  clear  uses; 
and  since  he  could  honestly  do  it,  as  the  lawyer  exercising 
professional  medicine,  he  gave  himself  gladly  to  the  task. 
"  Esther,"  he  said,  "  it  is  infernal  to  ask  you  these  per 
sonal  questions.  But  you  will  have  to  bring  yourself  to 
answer  them  if  we  are  to  decide  whether  you  have  any  case 
and  whether  I  can  send  you  to  another  man.  But  if  you 
do  engage  counsel,  you'll  have  to  talk  to  him  freely. 
You'll  have  to  answer  all  sorts  of  questions.  It's  a  pretty 
comprehensive  thing  to  admit  the  law  into  your  private  life, 
because  you've  got  to  give  it  every  right  there.  You'll 
be  questioned.  And  you'll  have  to  answer." 

Esther  sat  looking  at  him  steadily.  As  she  looked,  her 
pale  cheek  seemed  to  fill  and  flush  and  a  light  ran  into  her 
eyes,  until  the  glow  spilled  over  and  dazzled  him,  like 
something  wavering  between  him  and  her.  He  had  never 
seen  that  light  in  her  eyes,  nor  indeed  the  eyes  of  any 
woman,  nor  would  he  have  said  that  he  could  bear  to  see 
it  there  unsummoned.  Yet  had  he  not  summoned  it  uncon 
sciously,  hard  as  he  was  trying  to  play  the  honest  game 
between  an  unattached  woman  and  a  man  who  sees  her 
fetters  where  she  has  ceased  to  see  them,  but  can  only  feel 
them  gall  her?  Had  not  the  inner  spirit  of  him  been 
speaking  through  all  this  interview  to  the  inner  spirit  of 
her,  and  was  she  not  willing  now  to  let  it  cry  out  and  say 
to  him,  "  I  am  here  "?  Esther  was  willing  to  cry  out.  In 
the  bewilderment  of  it,  he  did  not  know  whether  it  was 
superb  of  her,  though  he  would  have  felt  it  in  another 
woman  to  be  shameless.  The  lustrous  lights  of  her  eyes 
dwelt  upon  him,  unwavering.  Then  her  lips  confirmed 
them. 

"Well,"  said  Esther,  "isn't  it  worth  it?" 

Alston  got  up  and  rather  blindly  went  out  of  the  room. 


THE  PRISONER  291 

In  the  street,  after  the  summer  breeze  had  been  touching 
his  forehead  and  yet  not  cooling  it,  he  realised  he  was  car 
rying  his  hat  in  his  hand,  and  put  it  on  hastily.  He  was 
Addington  to  the  backbone,  when  he  was  not  roaming  the 
fields  of  fiction,  and  one  of  the  rules  of  Addington  was 
against  looking  queer.  He  walked  to  his  office  and  let 
himself  in.  The  windows  were  closed  and  the  room  had  the 
crude  odour  of  public  life:  dust,  stale  tobacco  and  books. 
He  threw  up  the  windows  and  hesitated  an  instant  by  the 
gas  jet.  It  was  his  habit,  when  the  outer  world  pressed 
him  too  heavily,  to  plunge  instantly  into  a  book.  But 
books  were  no  anodyne  for  the  turmoil  of  this  night.  Nor 
was  the  light  upon  these  familiar  furnishings.  He  sat 
down  by  the  window,  laid  his  arms  on  the  sill  and  looked 
out  over  the  meadows,  unseen  now  but  throwing  their  damp 
exhalations  up  to  him  through  the  dark.  His  heart  beat 
hard,  and  in  the  physical  vigour  of  its  revolt  he  felt  a  fierce 
pleasure ;  but  he  was  shamed  all  through  in  some  way  he 
felt  he  could  not  meet.  Had  he  seen  a  new  Esther  to 
night,  an  Esther  that  had  not  seemed  to  exist  under  the 
soft  lashes  of  the  woman  he  thought  he  knew  so  well?  He 
had  a  stiffly  drawn  picture  of  what  a  woman  ought  to  be. 
She  really  conformed  to  Addington  ideals.  He  believed 
firmly  that  the  austere  and  noble  dwelt  within  woman  as 
Addington  had  framed  her.  It  would  have  given  him  no 
pleasure  to  find  a  savage  hidden  under  pretty  wiles.  But 
Alston  believed  so  sincerely  in  the  control  of  man  over  the 
forces  of  life,  of  which  woman  was  one,  that,  if  Esther  had 
stepped  backward  from  her  bright  estate  into  a  barbarous 
challenge,  it  was  his  fault,  he  owned,  not  hers.  He  should 
have  guided  her  so  that  she  stayed  within  hallowed  pre 
cincts.  He  should  have  upheld  her  so  that  she  did  not 
stumble  over  these  pitfalls  of  the  earth.  It  is  a  pity  those 
ideals  of  old  Addington  that  made  Alston  Choate  believe 


292  THE  PRISONER 

in  women  as  little  lower  than  the  angels  and,  if  they  proved 
themselves  lower,  not  really  culpable  because  they  are  chil 
dren  and  not  rightly  guided  —  it  is  a  pity  that  garden 
cannot  keep  on  blooming  even  out  of  the  midden  of  the 
earth.  But  he  had  kept  the  garden  blooming.  Adding- 
ton  had  a  tremendous  grip  on  him.  It  was  not  that  he  had 
never  seen  other  customs,  other  manners.  He  had  trav 
elled  a  reasonable  amount  for  an  Addington  man,  but 
always  he  had  been  able  to  believe  that  Eden  is  what  it  was 
when  there  was  but  one  man  in  it  and  one  woman.  There 
was,  of  course,  too,  the  serpent.  But  Alston  was  fastid 
ious,  and  he  kept  his  mind  as  far  away  from  the  serpent 
as  possible.  He  thought  of  his  mother  and  sister,  and 
instantly  ceased  thinking  of  them,  because  to  them  Esther 
was  probably  a  sweet  person,  and  he  knew  they  would  not 
have  recognised  the  Esther  he  saw  to-night.  Perhaps, 
though  he  did  not  know  this,  his  mother  might. 

Mrs.  Choate  was  a  large,  almost  masculine  looking 
woman,  very  plain  indeed,  Addington  owned,  but  with 
beautiful  manners.  She  was  not  like  Alston,  not  like  his 
sister,  who  had  a  highbred  charm,  something  in  the  way  of 
Alston's  own.  Mother  was  different.  She  was  of  the 
Griswolds  who  had  land  in  Cuba  and  other  islands,  and 
were  said  to  have  kept  slaves  there  while  the  Choates  were 
pouring  blood  into  the  abolitionist  cause.  There  was  a 
something  about  mother  quite  different  from  anybody 
in  Addington.  She  conformed  beautifully,  but  you  would 
have  felt  she  understood  your  not  conforming.  She  never 
came  to  grief  over  the  neutralities  of  the  place,  and  you 
realised  it  was  because  she  expressed  so  few  opinions. 
You  might  have  said  she  had  taken  Addington  for  what  it 
was  and  exhausted  it  long  ago.  Her  gaze  was  an  absent, 
yet,  of  late  years,  a  placid  one.  She  might  have  been 
dwelling  upon  far-off  islands  which  excited  in  her  no  desire 


THE  PRISONER  293 

to  be  there.  She  was  too  cognisant  of  the  infinite  riches  of 
time  that  may  be  supposed  to  make  up  eternity.  If  she 
was  becalmed  here  in  Addington,  some  far-off  day  a  wind 
would  fill  her  sails  and  she  might  seek  the  farther  seas. 
And,  like  her  son,  she  read  novels. 

Alston,  going  home  at  midnight,  saw  the  pale  glimmer 
in  her  room  and  knew  she  was  at  it  there.  He  went  di 
rectly  upstairs  and  stopped  at  her  door,  open  into  the 
hall.  He  was  not  conscious  of  having  anything  to  say. 
Only  he  did  feel  a  curious  hesitation  for  the  moment. 
Here  in  Addington  was  an  Esther  whom  he  had  just  met 
for  the  first  time.  Here  was  another  woman  who  had 
not  one  of  Esther's  graces,  but  whom  he  adored  because 
she  was  the  most  beautiful  of  mothers.  Would  she  be  hor 
rified  at  the  little  strange  animal  that  had  looked  at  him 
out  of  Esther's  eyes?  He  had  never  seen  his  mother 
shocked  at  anything.  But  that,  he  told  himself,  was  be 
cause  she  was  so  calm.  The  Woman's  Club  of  Addington 
could  have  told  him  it  was  because  she  had  poise.  She 
looked  up,  as  he  stood  in  the  doorway,  and  laid  her  book 
face  downward  on  the  bed.  Usually  when  he  came  in  like 
this  she  moved  the  reading  candle  round,  so  that  the  hood 
should  shield  his  eyes.  But  to-night  she  gently  turned 
it  toward  him,  and  Alston  did  not  realise  that  was  be 
cause  his  fagged  face  and  disordered  hair  had  made  her 
anxious  to  understand  the  quicker  what  had  happened  to 
him. 
I  "  Sit  down,"  she  said. 

And  then,  having  fairly  seen  him,  she  did  turn  the  hood. 
Alston  dropped  into  the  chair  by  the  bedside  and  looked  at 
her.  She  was  a  plain  woman,  it  is  true,  but  of  heroic  lines. 
Her  iron-grey  hair  was  brushed  smoothly  back  into  its 
two  braids,  and  her  nightgown,  with  its  tiny  edge,  was  of 
the  most  pronouncedly  sensible  cut,  of  high  neck  and  long 


294  THE  PRISONER 

sleeves.  Yet  there  was  nothing  uncouth  about  her  in  her 
elderly  ease  of  dress  and  manner.  She  was  a  wholesome 
woman,  and  the  heart  of  her  son  turned  pathetically  to 
her. 

"  Mary  gone  to  bed?  "  he  asked. 

"  Yes,"  said  Mrs.  Choate.  "  She  was  tired.  She's  been 
rehearsing  a  dance  with  those  French  girls  and  their  class." 

Alston  lay  back  in  his  chair,  regarding  her  with  hot, 
tired  eyes.  He  wanted  to  know  what  she  thought  of  a 
great  many  things :  chiefly  whether  a  woman  who  had  mar 
ried  Jeff  Blake  need  be  afraid  of  him.  But  there  was  a 
well-defined  code  between  his  mother  and  himself.  He  was 
not  willing  to  trap  her  into  honest  answers  where  he 
couldn't  put  honest  questions. 

"  Mother,"  said  he,  and  didn't  know  why  he  began  or 
indeed  that  he  was  going  to  say  just  that  at  all,  "  do  you 
ever  wish  you  could  run  away  ?  " 

She  gave  the  corner  of  the  book  a  pat  with  one  beautiful 
hand. 

"  I  do  run  away,"  she  said.  "  I  was  a  good  many  miles 
from  here  when  you  came  in.  And  I  shall  be  again  when 
you  are  gone.  Among  the  rogues,  such  as  we  don't  see." 

"What  is  it?" 

"  Mysteries  of  Paris." 

"  That's  our  vice,  isn't  it,"  said  Alston,  "  yours  and 
mine,  novel  reading?  " 

"  You're  marked  with  it,"  said  she. 

There  was  something  in  the  quiet  tone  that  arrested 
him  and  made  him  look  at  her  more  sharply.  The  tone 
seemed  to  say  she  had  not  only  read  novels  for  a  long 
time,  but  she  had  had  to  read  them  from  a  grave  design. 
"  It  does  very  well  for  me,"  she  said,  "  but  it  easily 
mightn't  for  you.  Alston,  why  don't  you  run  away?  " 

Alston  stared  at  her. 


THE  PRISONER  295 

"Would  you  like  to  go  abroad?"  he  asked  her  then, 
"  with  Mary  ?  Would  you  like  me  to  take  you  ?  " 

"  Oh,  no,"  said  Mrs.  Choate.  "  Mary  wouldn't  want 
to.  She's  bewitched  with  those  French  girls.  And  I  don't 
want  to.  I  couldn't  go  the  only  way  I'd  like." 

"  You  could  go  any  way  you  chose,"  said  Alston, 
touched.  He  knew  there  was  a  war  chest,  and  it  irked 
him  to  think  his  mother  wouldn't  have  it  tapped  for  her. 

"  Oh,  no,"  said  she.  "  I  should  need  to  be  slim  and 
light,  and  put  on  short  petticoats  and  ride  horses  and  get 
away  from  tigers.  I  don't  want  to  shoot  them,  but  I'd 
rather  like  to  get  away  from  them." 

"  Mother,"  said  Alston,  "  what's  come  over  you?  Is  it 
this  book?" 

She  laughed,  in  an  easy  good-humour. 

"  Books  don't  come  over  me,"  said  she.  "  I  believe  it's 
that  old  Madame  Beattie." 

"  What's  Madame  Beattie  done  that  any  — "  he  paused ; 
Esther's  wrongs  at  Madame  Beattie's  hands  were  too  red 
before  him  —  "  that  any  lady  would  be  willing  to  do  ?  " 

"  I  really  don't  know,  Alston,"  said  his  mother  frankly. 
"  It's  only  that  when  I  think  of  that  old  party  going  out 
every  night  —  " 

"  Not  every  night." 

"  Well,  when  she  likes,  and  getting  up  on  a  platform  and 
telling  goodness  knows  what  to  the  descendants  of  the 
oldest  civilisations,  and  their  bringing  her  home  on  their 
shoulders  —  " 

"  No,  no,  mother,  they  don't  do  that." 

"  I  tell  you  what  it  makes  me  feel,  Alston :  it  makes  me 
feel  fat." 

"  Madame  Beattie  weighs  twenty  pounds  more  than  you 
do,  and  she's  not  so  tall  by  three  inches." 

"  And  then  I  realise  that  when  women  say  they  want  to 


296  THE  PRISONER 

vote,  it  isn't  because  they're  all  piously  set  on  saving  the 
country.  It's  because  they've  peeped  over  the  fence  and 
got  an  idea  of  the  game,  and  they're  crazy  to  be  in  it." 

"  But,  mother,  there's  no  game,  except  a  dirty  one  of 
graft  and  politics.  There's  nothing  in  it." 

"  No,"  said  Mrs.  Choate.  "  There  isn't  in  most  games. 
But  people  play  them." 

"  You  don't  think  Amabel  is  in  it  for  the  game?  " 
"  Oh,  no !     Amabel's  a  saint.     It  wouldn't  take  more 
than  a  basket  of  wood  and  a  bunch  of  matches  to  make 
her  a  martyr." 

"  But,  mother,"  said  Alston,  "  you  belong  to  the  antis." 
"  Do  I?  "  asked  his  mother.     "  Yes,  I  believe  I  do." 
"  Do  you  mean  to  say  you're  not  sincere?  " 
"  Why,  yes,  of  course  I'm  sincere.     So  are  they.     Only, 
doesn't  it  occur  to  you  they're  having  just  as  much  fun 
organising  and  stirring  the  pot  as  if  it  was  the  other  pot 
they  were  stirring?     Besides  they  attitudinise  while  they 
stir,  and  say  they're  womanly.     And  they  like  that,  too." 
"  Do  you  think  they're  in  it  for  the  game  ?  " 
"  No,  no,  Alston,  not  consciously.     Nobody's  in  it  for 
the  game  except  your  Weedon  Moores.     Any  more  than 
a  nice  girl  puts   on  a  ribbon  to  trap  her  lover.     Only 
nature's  behind  the  girl,  and  nature's  behind  the  game. 
She's  behind  all  games.     But  as  to  the  antis  —  "  said  Mrs. 
Choate  impatiently,  "  they've  gone  on  putting  down  cards 
since  the  rules  were  changed." 

Alston  rose  and  stood  looking  down  at  her.  She  glanced 
up  brightly,  met  his  eyes  and  laughed. 

"  All  is,"  said  she,  in  a  current  phrase  even  cultured 
Addington  had  caught  from  its  "  help  "  from  the  rural 
radius  outside,  "  I  just  happened  to  feel  like  telling  you  if 
you  want  to  run  away,  you  go.  And  if  I  weighed  a  hun 
dred  and  ten  and  were  forty-five,  I'd  go  with  you.  Ac- 


THE  PRISONER  297 

tually,  I  should  advise  you,  if  you're  going  to  stay  here, 
to  stir  the  pot  a  little  now  it's  begun  to  boil  so  hard." 

"  Get  into  politics  ?  "  he  asked,  remembering  Jeff. 

«  Maybe." 

She  smiled  at  him,  pleasantly,  not  as  a  mother  smiles,  but 
an  implacable  mistress  of  destiny.  In  spite  of  her  large 
tolerance,  there  were  moments  when  she  did  speak.  So  she 
had  looked  when  he  said,  as  a  boy,  that  he  shouldn't  go  to 
gymnasium,  and  she  had  told  him  he  would.  And  he  went. 
Again,  when  he  was  in  college  and  had  fallen  in  with  a  set 
of  ultra-moderns  and  swamped  himself  in  decoration 
and  the  beguilements  of  a  spurious  art,  he  had  seen  that 
look;  then  she  had  told  him  the  classics  were  not  to  be 
neglected.  Now  here  was  the  look  again.  Alston  began 
to  have  an  uncomfortable  sense  that  he  might  have  to  run 
for  office  in  spite  of  every  predilection  he  ventured  to  cher 
ish.  He  could  have  thrown  himself  on  the  floor  and  bel 
lowed  to  be  let  alone. 

"  But  keep  your  head,  dear,"  she  was  saying.  "  Keep 
your  head.  Don't  let  any  man  —  or  woman  either  —  lose 
it  for  you.  That's  the  game,  Alston,  really." 

It  was  such  a  warm  impetuous  tone  it  brought  them  al 
most  too  suddenly  and  too  close  together.  Alston  meant 
to  kiss  her,  as  he  did  almost  every  night,  but  he  awk 
wardly  could  not.  He  went  out  of  the  room  in  a  shy 
haste,  and  when  he  dropped  off  to  sleep  he  was  thinking, 
not  of  Esther,  but  of  his  mother.  Even  so  he  did  not 
suspect  that  his  mother  knew  he  had  come  from  Esther 
and  how  fast  his  blood  was  running. 


XXVI 

Jeff,  writing  hard  on  his  book  to  tell  men  they  were  pris 
oners  and  had  to  get  free,  was  tremendously  happy.  He 
thought  he  saw  the  whole  game  now,  the  big  game  these 
tiny  issues  reflected  in  a  million  mirrors.  You  were  given 
life  and  incalculable  opportunity.  But  you  were  allowed 
to  go  it  blind.  They  never  really  interfered  with  you, 
the  terrible  They  up  there :  for  he  could  not  help  believing 
there  was  an  Umpire  of  the  game,  though  nobody,  it 
seemed,  was  permitted  to  see  the  score  until  long  after 
ward,  when  the  trumpery  rewards  had  been  distributed. 
(Some  of  them  were  not  trumpery ;  they  were  as  big  as  the 
heavens  and  the  sea.)  He  found  a  great  many  things  to 
laugh  over,  sane,  kind  laughter,  in  the  way  the  game  was 
played  there  in  Addington.  Religion  especially  seemed  to 
him  the  big  absurd  paradox.  Here  were  ingenuous  wor 
shippers  preserving  a  form  of  observance  as  primitive  as 
the  burnt-offerings  before  a  god  of  bronze  or  wood.  They 
went  to  church  and  placated  their  god,  and  swore  they  be 
lieved  certain  things  the  acts  of  their  lives  repudiated. 
They  made  a  festival  at  Christmas  time  and  worshipped  at 
the  manger  and  declared  God  had  come  to  dwell  among 
men.  They  honored  Joseph  who  was  the  spouse  of  Mary, 
and  who  was  a  carpenter,  and  on  the  twenty-sixth  of  Dec 
ember  they  nodded  with  condescension  to  their  own  carpen 
ter,  if  they  met  him  in  the  street,  or  they  failed  to  see  him 
at  all.  And  their  carpenter,  who  was  doing  his  level  best 
to  prevent  them  from  grinding  the  face  of  labour,  himself 

ground  the  face  of  his  brother  carpenter  if  his  brother  did 

298 


THE  PRISONER  299 

not  heartily  co-operate  in  keeping  hours  down  and  prices 
up.  And  everybody  was  behaving  from  the  prettiest  of 
motives ;  that  was  the  joke  of  it.  They  not  only  said  their 
prayers  before  going  out  to  trip  up  the  competitor  who 
was  lying  in  wait  to  trip  up  them ;  they  actually  believed 
in  the  efficacy  of  the  prayer.  They  glorified  an  arch 
apostle  of  impudence  who  pricked  bubbles  for  them  —  a 
modern  literary  light  —  but  they  went  on  blowing  their 
bubbles  just  the  same,  and  when  the  apostle  of  impudence 
pricked  them  again  they  only  said :  "  Oh,  it's  so  amusing !  " 
and  blew  more.  And  even  the  apostle  of  impudence  wasn't 
so  busy  pricking  bubbles  that  he  didn't  have  time  to  blow 
bubbles  of  his  own,  and  even  he  didn't  know  how  thin  and 
hollow  his  own  bubbles  were,  which  was  the  reason  they 
could  float  so  high.  He  saw  the  sun  on  them  and  thought 
they  were  the  lanterns  that  lighted  up  the  show.  Jeff 
believed  he  had  discovered  the  clever  little  trick  at  the 
bottom  of  the  game,  the  trick  that  should  give  over  to  your 
grasp  the  right  handle  at  last.  This  was  that  every  man, 
once  knowing  he  was  a  prisoner,  should  laugh  at  his  fet 
ters  and  break  them  by  his  own  muscle. 

"  The  trouble  is,"  he  said,  at  breakfast,  when  Mary 
Nellen  was  bringing  in  the  waffles,  "  we're  all  such  liars." 

The  colonel  sat  there  in  a  mild  peaceableness,  quite  an 
other  man  under  the  tan  of  his  honest  intimacy  with  the 
sun.  He  had  been  up  hoeing  an  hour  before  breakfast, 
and  helped  himself  to  waffles  liberally,  while  Mary  Nellen 
looked,  with  all  her  intellectual  aspirations  in  her  eyes,  at 
Jeff. 

"  No,  no,"  said  the  colonel.  He  was  conscious  of  very 
kindly  feelings  within  himself,  and  believed  in  nearly  every 
body  but  Esther.  She,  he  thought,  might  have  a  chance 
of  salvation  if  she  could  be  reborn,  physically  hideous, 
into  a  world  obtuse  to  her. 


300  THE  PRISONER 

"  Liars  !  "  said  Jeff  mildly.  "  We're  doing  the  things 
we're  expected  to  do,  righteous  or  not.  And  we're  saying 
the  things  we  don't  believe." 

"  That's  nothing  but  kindness,"  said  the  colonel.  Mary 
Nellen  made  a  pretence  of  business  at  the  side  table,  and 
listened  greedily.  She  would  take  what  she  had  gathered 
to  the  kitchen  and  discuss  it  to  rags.  She  found  the  at 
mosphere  very  stimulating.  "  If  I  asked  Lydia  here 
whether  she  found  my  hair  thin,  Lydia  would  say  she 
thought  it  beautiful  hair,  wouldn't  you,  Lyddy?  She 
couldn't  in  decency  tell  me  I'm  as  bald  as  a  rat." 

"  It  is  beautiful,"  said  Lydia.  "  It  doesn't  need  to  be 
thick." 

Jeff  had  refused  waffles.  He  thrust  his  hands  in  his 
pockets  and  leaned  back,  regarding  his  father  with  a 
smile.  The  lines  in  his  face,  Lydia  thought,  fascinated, 
were  smoothed  out,  all  but  the  channels  in  the  forehead 
and  the  cleft  between  his  brows.  That  last  would  never  go. 

"  I  am  simply,"  said  Jeff,  "  so  tickled  I  can  hardly  con 
tain  myself.  I  have  discovered  something." 

"What?  "said  Lydia. 

"  The  world,"  said  Jeff.  "  Here  it  is.  It's  mine.  I 
can  have  it  to  play  with.  It's  yours.  You  can  play,  too. 
So  can  that  black-eyed  army  Madame  Beattie  has  mobil 
ised.  So  can  she." 

Anne  was  looking  at  him  in  a  serious  anxiety. 

"  With  conditions  as  they  are  — "  said  she,  and  Jeff 
interrupted  her  without  scruple. 

"  That's  the  point.  With  conditions  as  they  are,  we've 
got  to  dig  into  things  and  mine  out  pleasures,  and  shake 
them  in  the  faces  of  the  mob  and  the  mob  will  follow  us." 

The  colonel  had  ceased  eating  waffles.  His  thin  hand, 
not  so  delicate  now  that  it  had  learned  the  touch  of  toil, 
trembled  a  little  as  it  held  his  fork. 


THE  PRISONER  301 

"  Jeff,"  said  he,  "  what  do  you  want  to  do?  " 

"  I  want,"  said  Jeff,  "  to  keep  this  town  out  of  the  clutch 
of  Weedie  Moore." 

"  You  can't  do  it.  Not  so  long  as  Amabel  is  backing 
him.  She's  got  unlimited  cash,  and  she  thinks  he's  God 
Almighty  and  she  wants  him  to  be  mayor." 

<;  It's  a  far  cry,"  said  Jeff,  "  from  God  Almighty  to 
mayor.  But  Alston  Choate  is  going  to  be  nominated  for 
mayor,  and  he's  going  to  get  it." 

"  He  won't  take  it,"  said  Anne  impulsively,  and  bit  her 

HP. 

"  How  do  you  know?  "  asked  Jeff. 

"  He  hates  politics." 

"  He  hates  Addington  more  as  it  is." 

They  got  up  and  moved  to  the  library,  standing  about 
for  a  moment,  while  Farvie  held  the  morning  paper  for  a 
cursory  glance,  before  separating  for  their  different  deeds. 
When  Farvie  and  Anne  had  gone  Jeff  took  up  the  paper 
and  Lydia  lingered.  Jeff  felt  the  force  of  her  silent  wait 
ing.  It  seemed  to  bore  a  hole  through  the  paper  itself  and 
knock  at  his  brain  to  be  let  in.  He  threw  the  paper 
down. 

"Well?  "said  he. 

L'ydia  was  all  alive.  Her  small  face  seemed  drawn  to 
a  point  of  eagerness.  She  spoke. 

"  Alston  Choate  isn't  the  man  for  mayor." 

"Who  is?" 

"  You." 

Jeff  slowly  smiled  at  her. 

"I?"  he  said.  "How  many  votes  do  you  think  I'd 
get?" 

"  All  the  foreign  vote.  And  the  best  streets  wouldn't 
vote  at  all." 

"Why?" 


302  THE  PRISONER 

She  bit  her  lip.     She  had  not  meant  to  say  it. 

"  No,"  said  Jeff,  interpreting  for  her,  c;  maybe  they 
wouldn't.  That's  like  Addington.  It  wouldn't  stand  for 
me,  but  it  would  be  too  well-bred  to  stand  against  me.  No, 
Lyddy,  I  shouldn't  get  a  show.  And  I  don't  want  a  show. 
All  I  want  is  to  bust  Weedon  Moore." 

Lydia  looked  the  unmovable  obstinacy  she  felt  stiffen 
ing  every  fibre  of  her. 

"  You're  all  wrong,"  she  said.  "  You  could  have  any 
thing  you  wanted." 

"Who  says  so?" 

"Madame  Beattie." 

"  I  wish,"  said  Jeff,  "  that  old  harpy  would  go  to  Elba 
or  Siberia  or  the  devil.  I'm  not  going  to  run  for  of 
fice." 

"  What  are  you  going  to  do  ?  "  asked  Lydia,  in  a  small 
voice.  She  was  resting  a  hand  on  the  table,  and  the  hand 
trembled. 

"  It's  a  question  of  what  I  won't  do,  at  present.  I  won't 
go  down  there  to  the  hall  and  make  an  ass  of  myself  talk 
ing  history  and  be  dished  by  that  old  marplot.  But  if  I 
can  get  hold  of  the  same  men  —  having  previously  gagged 
Madame  Beattie  or  deported  her  —  I'll  make  them  act 
some  plays." 

"What  kind  of  plays?" 

"  Shakespeare,  maybe." 

"  They  can't  do  that.     They  don't  know  enough." 

"  They  know  enough  to  understand  that  old  rascal's 
game,  whatever  it  is,  and  hoot  with  her  when  she's  done  me. 
And  she's  given  me  the  tip,  with  her  dramatics  up  there 
on  the  platform,  and  the  way  they  answered.  They're 
children,  and  they  want  to  play.  She  had  the  cleverness 
to  see  it.  And  they  shall  play  with  me." 

"  But  they  won't  act  Shakespeare,"  said  Lydia.     "  They 


THE  PRISONER  303 

only  care  about  their  own  countries.  That's  why  they 
love  Madame  Beattie." 

"  What  are  their  countries,  Lydia  ?  " 

"  Greece,  Italy,  Poland,  Russia  —  oh,  a  lot  more." 

"Aren't  they  voting  here  in  this  country?" 

"  Why,  yes,  ever  so  many  of  them." 

"  Then,"  said  Jeff,  "  this  is  their  country,  and  this  is 
their  language,  and  they've  got  to  learn  some  English  plays 
and  act  them  as  God  pleases.  But  act  them  they  shall. 
Or  their  children  shall.  And  you  may  give  my  compli 
ments  to  Madame  Beattie  and  tell  her  if  she  blocks  my 
game  I'll  block  hers.  She'll  understand.  And  they've 
got  to  learn  what  England  was  and  what  America  meant 
to  be  till  she  got  on  the  rocks." 

"  Jeff,"  said  Lydia,  venturing,  "  aren't  you  going  into 
business  ?  " 

"  I  am  in  business,"  said  Jeff.  "  It's  my  business  to 
bail  out  the  scuppers  here  in  Addington  and  bust  Weedie 
Moore." 

"  If  you  went  into  business,"  said  Lydia,  "  and  made 
money  you  could  —  " 

"  I  could  pay  off  my  creditors  ?  No,  I  couldn't,  Lydia. 
I  could  as  easily  lift  this  house." 

"  But  you  could  pay  something  —  " 

"  Something  on  a  dollar  ?  Lydia,  I've  been  a  thief,  a 
plain  common  thief.  I  stole  a  chicken,  say.  Well,  the 
chicken  got  snatched  away  somehow  and  scrambled  for, 
and  eaten.  Anyway,  the  chicken  isn't.  And  you  want  me 
to  steal  another  —  " 

"No,  no." 

"  Yes,  you  do.  I  should  have  to  steal  it.  I  haven't 
time  enough  in  my  whole  life  to  get  another  chicken  as  big 
and  as  fat,  unless  I  steal  it.  No,  Lydia,  I  can't  do  it.  If 
you  make  me  try,  I  shall  blow  my  nut  off,  that's  all." 


304  THE  PRISONER 

Lydia  was  terrified  and  he  reassured  her. 

"  No.  Don't  worry.  I  sha'n't  let  go  my  grip  on  the 
earth.  When  I  walk  now  I'm  actually  sticking  my  claws 
into  her.  I've  found  out  what  she  is." 

But  Lydia  still  looked  at  him,  hungry  for  his  happiness, 
and  he  despairingly  tried  to  show  her  his  true  mind. 

"  You  mustn't  think  for  a  minute  I  can  wipe  out  my  old 
score  and  show  you  a  perfectly  clean  slate  with  a  nice 
scrollwork  round  it.  Can't  do  it,  Lydia.  I  sha'n't  come 
in  for  any  of  the  prizes.  I've  got  to  be  a  very  ordinary, 
insignificant  person  from  now  on." 

That  hurt  her  and  it  did  no  good.  She  didn't  believe 
him. 

Not  many  days  from  this  Jeff  started  out  talking  to 
men.  He  frankly  wanted  something  and  asked  for  it. 
Addington,  he  told  them,  if  they  built  more  factories  and 
put  in  big  industries,  as  they  were  trying  to  do,  was  going 
to  call  in  more  and  more  foreign  workmen.  It  was  going 
to  be  a  melting-pot  of  small  size.  That  was  a  current 
catch-word.  Jeff  used  it  as  glibly  as  the  women  of  the 
clubs.  The  pot  was  going  to  seethe  and  bubble  over  and 
some  demagogue  —  he  did  not  mention  Weedie  —  was  go 
ing  to  stir  it,  and  the  Addington  of  our  fathers  would  be 
lost.  The  business  men  looked  at  him  with  the  slow  smile 
of  the  sane  for  the  fanatic  and  answered  from  the  fatuous 
optimism  of  the  man  who  expects  the  world  to  last  at  least 
his  time.  Some  of  them  said  something  about  "  this  great 
country  ",  as  if  it  were  chartered  by  the  Almighty  to  stand 
the  assaults  of  other  races,  and  when  he  reminded  them 
that  Addington  was  not  trying  to  amalgamate  its  aliens 
with  its  own  ideals,  and  was  giving  them  over  instead  to 
Weedon  Moore,  they  laughed  at  him. 

"What's  Weedon  Moore?"  one  man  said.  "A  dirty 
little  shyster.  Let  him  talk.  He  can't  do  any  harm." 


THE  PRISONER  305 

"  Do  you  know  what  he's  telling  them?  "  Jeff  inquired. 

They  supposed  they  did.  He  was  probably  asking 
them  to  vote  for  him. 

"Not  a  bit  of  it,"  said  Jeff.  "  He'll  do  that  later. 
He's  telling  them  they  hold  the  key  of  the  treasury  and 
they've  only  to  turn  it  to  be  inside.  He's  giving  no  credit 
to  brains  and  leadership  and  tradition  and  law  and  pun 
ishment  for  keeping  the  world  moving.  He's  telling  the 
man  with  the  hod  and  the  man  with  the  pickaxe  that  simply 
by  virtue  of  the  hod  and  the  pickaxe  the  world  is  his: 
not  a  fraction  of  it,  mind  you,  but  the  earth.  To  kick 
into  space,  if  he  likes.  And  kick  Addington  with  it." 

They  smoothed  him  down  after  one  fashion  or  another, 
and  put  their  feet  up  and  offered  him  a  cigar  and  wanted 
to  hear  all  about  his  prison  experiences,  but  hardly  liked 
to  ask,  and  so  he  went  away  in  a  queer  coma  of  disap 
pointment.  They  had  not  turned  him  out,  but  they  didn't 
know  what  he  was  talking  about.  Every  man  of  them 
was  trying  either  to  save  the  dollar  he  had  or  to  make 
another  dollar  to  keep  it  warm.  Jeff  went  home  sore  at 
heart ;  but  when  he  had  plucked  up  hope  again  out  of  his 
sense  of  the  ironies  of  things,  he  went  back  and  saw  the 
same  men  and  hammered  at  them.  He  explained,  with  a 
categorical  clearness,  that  he  knew  the  West  couldn't 
throw  over  the  East  now  she'd  taken  it  aboard.  Perhaps 
we'd  got  to  learn  our  lesson  from  it.  Just  as  it  might  be 
it  could  learn  something  from  us ;  and  since  it  was  here  in 
our  precincts,  it  had  got  to  learn.  We  couldn't  do  our 
new  citizens  the  deadly  wrong  of  allowing  the  seeds  of  an 
archy  to  be  planted  in  them  before  they  even  got  over  the 
effects  of  the  voyage.  If  there  were  any  virtue  left  in 
the  republic,  the  fair  ideal  of  it  should  be  stamped  upon 
them  as  they  came,  before  they  were  taught  to  riot  over 
the  rights  no  man  on  earth  could  have  unless  men  are 


306  THE  PRISONER 

going  to  fight  out  the  old  brute  battle  for  bare  suprem 
acy. 

Then  one  day  a  man  said  to  him,  "  Oh,  you're  an 
idealist !  "  and  all  his  antagonists  breathed  more  freely 
because  they  had  a  catchword.  They  looked  at  him, 
illuminated,  and  repeated  it. 

One  man,  a  big  coal  dealer  down  by  the  wharves,  did 
more  or  less  agree  with  him. 

"  It's  this  damned  immigration,"  he  said.  "  They  make 
stump  speeches  and  talk  about  the  open  door,  but  they 
don't  know  enough  to  shut  the  door  when  the  shebang's 
full." 

It  was  the  first  pat  retort  of  any  sort  Jeff  had  got. 

"  I'm  not  going  back  so  far  as  that,"  he  leaped  at  the 
chance  of  answering.  "  I  don't  want  to  wait  for  legis 
lation  to  crawl  along  and  shut  the  stable  door.  I  only 
say,  we've  invited  in  a  lot  of  foreigners.  We've  got  to 
teach  'em  to  be  citizens.  They've  got  to  take  the  country 
on  our  plan,  and  be  one  of  us." 

But  the  coal  man  had  tipped  back  in  his  chair  against 
the  coal  shed  and  was  scraping  his  nails  with  his  pocket 
knife.  He  did  it  with  exquisite  care,  and  his  half-closed 
eyes  had  a  look  of  sleepy  contentment;  he  might  have 
been  shaping  a  peaceful  destiny.  His  glimmer  of  re 
sponsiveness  had  died. 

"  I  don't  know  what  you're  goin'  to  do  about  it,"  he 
said. 

"  We're  going  to  put  in  a  decent  man  for  mayor,"  said 
Jeff.  "  And  we're  going  to  keep  Weedon  Moore  out." 

"  Moore  ain't  no  good,"  said  the  coal  man.  "  But  I 
dunno's  he'd  do  any  harm." 

The  eyes  of  them  all  were  holden,  Jeff  thought.  They 
were  prisoners  to  their  own  greed  and  their  own  stupidity. 
So  he  sat  down  and  ran  them  into  his  book,  as  blind  cus- 


THE  PRISONER  307 

todians  of  the  public  weal.  His  book  was  being  written 
fast.  He  hardly  knew  what  kind  of  book  it  was,  whether 
it  wasn't  a  queer  story  of  a  wandering  type,  because  he 
had  to  put  what  he  thought  into  the  mouths  of  people. 
He  had  no  doubt  of  being  able  to  sell  it.  When  he  first 
came  out  of  prison  three  publishing  firms  of  the  greatest 
enterprise  had  asked  him  to  write  his  prison  experiences. 
To  one  of  these  he  wrote  now  that  the  book  was  three- 
quarters  done,  and  asked  what  the  firm  wanted  to  do  about 
it.  The  next  day  came  an  up-to-date  young  man,  and 
smoked  cigarettes  incessantly  on  the  veranda  while  he 
asked  questions.  What  kind  of  a  book  was  it?  Jeff 
brought  out  three  or  four  chapters,  and  the  young  man 
whirled  over  the  leaves  with  a  practised  and  lightning- 
like  faculty,  his  spectacled  eyes  probing  as  he  turned. 

"  Sorry,"  said  he.  "  Not  a  word  about  your  own  ex 
periences." 

"  It  isn't  my  prison  experience,"  said  Jeff.  "  It's  my 
life  here.  It's  everybody's  life  on  the  planet." 

"  Couldn't  sell  a  hundred  copies,"  said  the  young  man. 
Jeff  looked  at  him  in  admiration,  he  was  so  cocky  and  so 
sure.  "  People  don't  want  to  be  told  they're  prisoners. 
They  want  you  to  say  you  were  a  prisoner,  and  tell  how 
innocent  you  were  and  how  the  innocent  never  get  a  show 
and  the  guilty  go  scot  free." 

"  How  do  you  think  it's  written?  "  Jeff  ventured  to  ask. 

"  Admirably.  But  this  isn't  an  age  when  a  man  can 
sit  down  and  write  what  he  likes  and  tell  the  publisher 
he  can  take  it  and  be  damned.  The  publisher  knows 
mighty  well  what  the  public  wants.  He's  going  to  give  it 
to  'em,  too." 

"  You'd  say  it  won't  sell." 

<£  My  dear  fellow,  I  know.  I'm  feeling  the  pulse  of  the 
public  all  the  time.  It's  my  business." 


THE  PRISONER 

Jeff  put  out  his  hands  for  the  sheets  and  the  censor  gave 
them  up  willingly. 

"  I'm  frightfully  disappointed,"  he  said,  taking  off  his 
eyeglasses  to  wipe  them  on  his  handkerchief  and  looking 
so  babyishly  ingenuous  that  Jeff  broke  into  a  laugh.  "  I 
thought  we  should  get  something  'live  out  of  you,  some 
thing  we  could  push  with  conviction,  you  know.  But  we 
can't  this ;  we  simply  can't."  He  had  on  his  glasses  now, 
and  the  all-knowingness  had  come  mysteriously  back.  His 
eyes  seemed  to  shoot  arrows,  and  clutch  and  hold  you  so 
that  you  wanted  to  be  shot  by  them  again.  "  Tell  you 
what,  though.  We  might  do  this.  It's  a  crazy  book, 
you  know." 

"Is  it?"  Jeff  inquired. 

"  Oh,  absolutely.  Daffy.  They'd  put  it  in  the  eccen 
tric  section  of  a  library,  with  books  on  perpetual  motion 
and  the  fourth  dimension.  But  if  you'd  let  us  publish 
your  name  —  " 

"  Decidedly." 

"  And  do  a  little  preliminary  advertising.  How  prison 
life  had  undermined  your  health  and  even  touched  your 
reason,  so  you  weren't  absolutely  —  you  understand? 
Then  we'd  publish  it  as  an  eccentric  book  by  an  eccentric 
fellow,  a  victim  of  prison  regulations." 

Jeff  laid  his  papers  down  on  the  table  beside  him  and 
set  a  glass  on  them  to  keep  them  from  blowing  away. 

"  No,"  said  he.  "  I  never  was  saner  in  my  life.  I'm 
about  the  only  sane  man  in  this  town,  because  I've  dis 
covered  we're  all  mad  and  the  rest  of  'em  don't  know  it." 

"  That  very  remark !  "  said  the  young  man,  in  unmixed 
approval.  "  Don't  you  see  what  that  would  do  in  an  ad? 
My  dear  chap,  they  all  think  the  other  man's  daffy." 

Jeff  carried  the  manuscript  into  the  house,  and  asked 
the  wise  young  judge  to  come  out  and  see  his  late  corn, 


THE  PRISONER  309 

and  offered  him  a  platter  of  it  if  he'd  stay  to  supper.  And 
he  actually  did,  and  proved  to  be  a  very  good  fellow 
indeed,  born  in  the  country,  and  knowing  all  its  ways, 
only  gifted  with  a  diabolical  talent  for  adapting  himself 
to  all  sorts  of  places  and  getting  on.  He  was  quite  shy 
in  the  face  of  Anne  and  Lydia.  All  his  cockiness  left  him 
before  their  sober  graces,  and  when  Jeff  took  him  to 
the  station  he  had  lost,  for  the  moment,  his  rapier-like 
action  of  intellect  for  an  almost  maudlin  gratitude  over  the 
family  he  had  been  privileged  to  meet. 

Anne  and  Lydia  had  paid  him  only  an  absent-minded 
courtesy.  They  were  on  the  point  of  giving  an  evening 
of  folk-dancing,  under  Miss  Amabel's  patronage,  and 
young  foreigners  were  dropping  in  all  the  time  now  to 
ask  questions  and  make  plans.  And  whoever  they  were, 
these  soft-eyed  aliens,  they  looked  at  Jeff  with  the  look  he 
knew.  To  them  also  he  was  The  Prisoner. 


XXVII 

With  these  folk  dances  began  what  has  been  known  ever 
since  as  the  Dramatic  Movement  in  Addington.  On  this 
first  night  the  proudly  despairing  ticket-seller  began  to 
repeat  by  seven  o'clock :  "  Every  seat  taken."  Many  stood 
and  more  were  turned  away.  But  the  families  of  the  sons 
and  daughters  who  were  dancing  were  clever  enough  to 
come  early,  and  filled  the  body  of  the  hall.  Jeff  was  among 
them.  He,  too,  had  gone  early,  with  Anne  and  Lydia, 
to  carry  properties  and  help  them  with  the  stage.  And 
when  he  wasn't  needed  behind  the  scenes,  he  went  out  and 
sat  among  the  gay  contingent  from  Mill  End,  magnificent 
creatures  by  physical  inheritance,  the  men  still  rough 
round  the  edges  from  the  day's  work,  but  the  women  gay 
in  shawls  and  beads  and  shiny  combs.  Andrea  was  there 
and  bent  forward  until  Jeff  should  recognise  him,  and 
again  Jeff  realised  that  smiles  lit  up  the  place  for  him. 
Even  the  murmured  name  ran  round  among  the  rows. 
They  were  telling  one  another,  here  was  The  Prisoner. 
Whatever  virtue  there  was  in  being  a  prisoner,  it  had 
earned  him  adoring  friends. 

He  sat  there  wondering  over  it,  and  conventional  Ad 
dington  came  in  behind  and  took  the  vacant  places.  Jeff 
was  glad  not  to  be  among  them.  He  didn't  want  their 
sophisticated  views.  This  wasn't  a  pageant  for  critical 
comment.  It  was  Miss  Amabel's  pathetic  scheme  for 
bringing  the  East  and  the  West  together  and,  in  an  ex 
quisite  hospitality,  making  the  East  at  home. 

But  when  the  curtain  went  up,  he  opened  his  eyes  to 

310 


THE  PRISONER  311 

the  scene  and  ceased  thinking  of  philanthropy  and  Miss 
Amabel.  Here  was  beauty,  the  beauty  of  grace  and  tradi 
tionary  form.  They  were  dancing  the  tarantella.  Jeff 
had  seen  it  in  Italy,  more  than  one  night  after  the  gay 
little  dinners  Esther  had  loved  to  arrange  when  they  were 
abroad.  She  had  refused  all  the  innocent  bohemianisms 
of  foreign  travel ;  she  had  taken  her  own  atmosphere  of  ex 
pensive  conventionalities  with  her,  and  they  had  seen  Eu 
rope  through  that  medium.  In  all  their  travelling  they 
had  never  touched  racial  intimacies.  They  were  like  a 
prince  and  princess  convoyed  along  in  a  royal  progress, 
seeing  only  what  is  fitting  for  royal  eyes  to  see.  The 
tarantella  then  was  no  more  than  an  interlude  in  a  play. 
To-night  it  was  no  such  spectacle.  Jeff,  who  had  a  pretty 
imagination  of  his  own,  felt  hot  waves  of  homesickness 
for  the  beauties  of  foreign  lands,  and  yet  not  those  lands 
as  he  had  seen  them  unrolled  for  the  perusal  of  the  trav 
eller.  He  sat  in  a  dream  of  the  heaven  of  beauty  that  lies 
across  the  sea,  and  he  felt  toward  the  men  who  had  left 
it  to  come  here  to  better  themselves  a  compassion  in 
the  measure  of  his  compassion  for  himself.  How  bare  his 
own  life  had  been,  even  when  the  world  opened  before  him 
her  illuminated  page!  He  had  not  really  enjoyed  these 
exquisite  delights  of  hers ;  he  had  not  even  prepared  him 
self  for  enjoying.  He  had  kept  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  game 
that  ensures  mere  luxury,  and  he  had  let  Esther  go  out 
into  the  market  and  buy  for  them  both  the  only  sort  of 
happiness  her  eyes  could  see.  He  loved  this  dancing 
rout.  He  envied  these  boys  and  girls  their  passion 
and  facility.  They  were,  the  most  ignorant  of  them,  of 
another  stripe  from  arid  New  Englanders  encased  in 
their  temperamental  calm,  the  women,  in  a  laughable  self- 
satisfaction,  leading  the  intellectual  life  and  their  men  set 
on  "  making  good  ".  The  poorest  child  of  the  East  and 


312  THE  PRISONER 

South  had  an  inheritance  that  made  him  responsive,  fluent, 
even  while  it  left  him  hot-headed  and  even  f reward.  There 
was  something,  he  saw,  in  this  idea  of  the  melting-pot,  if 
only  the  mingling  could  be  managed  by  gods  that  saw  the 
future.  You  couldn't  make  a  wonder  of  a  bell  if  you 
poured  your  metal  into  an  imperfect  mould.  The  mould 
must  be  flawless  and  the  metal  cunningly  mixed;  and  then 
how  clear  the  tone,  how  resonant !  It  wasn't  the  tarantella 
only  that  led  him  this  long  wandering.  It  was  the  quality 
of  the  dancers ;  and  through  all  the  changing  steps  and 
measures  Anne  and  Lydia,  too,  were  moving,  Lydia  a  joy 
ous  leader  in  the  temperamental  rush  and  swing. 

Mrs.  Choate,  stately  in  dark  silk  and  lace  and  quite  un 
like  the  revolutionary  matron  who  had  lain  in  bed  and  let 
her  soul  loose  with  the  "  Mysteries  of  Paris,"  sat  between 
her  son  and  daughter  and  was  silent  though  she  grew 
bright-eyed.  Mary  whispered  to  her : 

"  Anne  looks  very  sweet,  doesn't  she  ?  but  not  at  all  like 
a  dancer." 

"  Sweet,"  said  the  mother. 

"  Anne  doesn't  belong  there,  does  she?  "  said  Alston. 

"  No,"  said  the  mother.     "  Lydia  does." 

"  Yes." 

Alston,  too,  was  moved  by  the  spectacle,  but  he  thought 
dove-like  Anne  far  finer  in  the  rout  than  gipsy  Lydia. 
His  mother  followed  his  thoughts  exactly,  but  while  she 
placidly  agreed,  it  was  Lydia  she  inwardly  envied,  Lydia 
who  had  youth  and  a  hot  heart  and  not  too  much  scruple 
to  keep  her  from  giving  each  their  way. 

When  it  was  over,  Jeff  waited  for  Anne  and  Lydia,  to 
carry  home  their  parcels.  He  stood  for  a  moment  beside 
Andrea,  and  Andrea  regarded  him  with  that  absurd  de 
votion  he  exuded  for  The  Prisoner.  Jeff  smiled  at  him 
even  affectionately,  though  quizzically.  He  wished  he 


THE  PRISONER  313 

knew  what  picture  of  him  was  under  Andrea's  skull.  A: 
sudden  impulse  seized  him  to  make  the  man  his  confidant. 

"  Andrea,"  said  he,  "  I  want  you  fellows  to  act  plays 
with  me." 

Andrea  looked  enchanted. 

"What  play?"  he  asked. 

"Shakespeare,"  said  Jeff.  "In  English.  That's 
your  language,  Andrea,  if  you're  going  to  live  here." 

Andrea's  face  died  into  a  dull  denial.  A  sort  of  glaze 
even  seemed  to  settle  over  the  surface  of  his  eyes.  He 
gave  a  perfunctory  grunt,  and  Jeff  caught  him  up  on  it. 

"  Won't  she  allow  it  ? "  he  hazarded.  "  Madame 
Beattie?" 

Andrea  was  really  caught  and  quite  evidently  relieved, 
too,  if  Jeff  understood  so  well.  He  smiled  again.  His 
eyes  took  on  their  wonted  shining.  Jeff,  relying  on  Anne's 
and  Lydia's  delay,  stayed  not  an  instant,  but  ran  out  of 
the  side  door  and  along  to  the  front  where  Madame  Beattie, 
he  knew,  was  making  a  stately  progress,  accepting  greet 
ings  in  a  magnificent  calm.  He  got  to  the  door  as  she 
did,  and  she  gave  him  the  same  royal  recognition.  She 
was  dressed  in  black,  her  head  draped  with  lace,  and  she 
really  did  look  a  distinguished  personage.  But  Jeff  was 
not  to  be  put  off  with  a  mere  greeting.  He  called  her 
name. 

"  You  may  take  me  home,"  she  said. 

"  I  can't,"  said  Jeff  ruthlessly,  when  he  had  got  her  out 
of  earshot.  "  I'm  going  to  carry  things  for  Anne." 

"  No,  you're  not."  She  put  her  hand  through  his  arm 
and  leaned  heavily  and  luxuriously.  "  Good  Lord,  Jeff, 
why  can't  New  Englanders  dance  like  those  shoemakers* 
daughters?  What  is  it  in  this  climate  that  dries  up  the 
blood?" 

"  Madame  Beattie,"  said  Jeff,  "  you've  got  to  give  away 


314  THE  PRISONER 

the  game.  You've  got  to  tell  me  how  you've  hypnotised 
every  man  Jack  of  those  people  there  to-night  so  they 
won't  do  a  reasonable  thing  I  ask  'em  unless  they've  had 
your  permission." 

"What  do  you  want  to  do?"  But  she  was  pleased. 
There  was  somebody  under  her  foot. 

"  I  want  to  rehearse  some  plays  in  English.  And  I 
gather  from  the  leader  of  the  clan  — " 

"Andrea?" 

"  Yes,  Andrea.  They  won't  do  it  unless  you  tell  them 
to." 

"  Of  course  they  won't,"  said  Madame  Beattie. 

"  Then  why  won't  they?     What's  your  infernal  spell?  " 

"  It's  the  spell  of  the  East.  And  you  can't  tempt  them 
with  anything  that  comes  out  of  the  West." 

"  Their  food  comes  out  of  the  West,"  said  Jeff,  smart 
ing. 

"  Oh,  that !  Well,  that's  about  all  you  can  give  them. 
That's  what  they  come  for." 

"  All  of  them?     Good  God !  " 

"  Not  good  God  at  all.  Don't  you  know  what  a  man  is 
led  by?  His  belly.  But  they  don't  all  come  for  that. 
Some  come  for  — "  She  laughed,  a  rather  cackling  laugh. 

"  What  ?  "  Jeff  asked  her  sternly.  He  shook  her  arm 
involuntarily. 

"Freedom.  That's  talked  about  still.  And  a  lot  of 
demagogues  like  your  Weedon  Moore  get  hold  of  'em  and 
debauch  'em  and  make  'em  drunk." 

"Drunk?" 

"  No,  no.  Not  on  liquor.  Better  if  they  did.  But 
they  tell  'em  they're  gods  and  all  they've  got  to  do  is  to 
climb  up  on  a  throne  and  crown  themselves." 

"  Then  why  won't  you,"  said  Jeff,  in  wrath,  "  let  me 
knock  something  else  into  their  heads.  You  can't  do  it 


THE  PRISONER  315 

by  facts.  There  aren't  many  facts  just  now  that  aren't 
shameful.  Why  can't  you  let  me  do  it  by  poetry  ?  " 

Madame  Beattie  stopped  in  the  street  and  gazed  up  at 
the  bright  heaven.  She  was  remembering  how  the  stars 
looked  in  Italy  when  she  was  young  and  sure  her  voice 
would  sound  quite  over  the  world.  She  seldom  challenged 
the  stars  now,  they  moved  her  so,  in  an  almost  terrible  way. 
What  had  she  made  of  life,  they  austerely  asked  her,  she 
who  had  been  driven  by  them  to  love  and  all  the  excellen 
cies  of  youth?  But  then,  in  answer,  she  would  ask  them 
what  they  had  done  for  her. 

"  Jeff,"  said  she,  "  you  couldn't  do  it  in  a  million  years. 
They'll  do  anything  for  me,  because  I  bring  their  own 
homes  to  them,  but  they  couldn't  make  themselves  over, 
even  for  me." 

"  They  like  me,"  said  Jeff,  "  for  some  mysterious  rea 
son." 

"  They  like  you  because  I've  told  them  to." 

"  I  don't  believe  it."     But  in  his  heart  he  did. 

"  Jeff,"  said  she,  «  life  isn't  a  matter  of  fact,  it's  a  mat 
ter  of  feeling.  You  can't  persuade  men  and  women  born 
in  Italy  and  Greece  and  Syria  and  Russia  that  they're 
happy  in  this  little  bare  town.  It  doesn't  smell  right  to 
them.  Their  hearts  are  somewhere  else.  And  they  want 
nothing  so  much  in  the  world  as  to  get  a  breath  from  there 
or  hear  a  story  or  see  somebody  that's  lived  there.  Lived 
—  not  stayed  in  a  pension." 

"  Do  they  feel  so  when  they've  seen  their  sisters  and 
cousins  and  aunts  carved  up  into  little  pieces  there?  " 
Jeff  asked  scoffingly.  But  she  was  hypnotising  him,  too. 
He  could  believe  they  did. 

"  What  have  you  to  offer  'em,  Jeff,  besides  wages  and 
a  prospect  of  not  being  assassinated?  That's  something, 
but  by  God !  it  isn't  everything."  She  swore  quite  simply 


316  THE  PRISONER 

because  out  in  the  night  even  in  the  straight  street  of  a 
New  England  town  she  felt  like  it  and  was  carelessly  will 
ing  to  abide  by  the  chance  of  God's  objecting. 

"  But  I  don't  see,"  said  Jeff,  "  why  you  won't  let  me 
have  my  try  at  it."  He  was  waiting  for  her  to  signify 
her  readiness  to  go  on,  and  now  she  did. 

"  Because  now,  Jeff,  they  do  think  you're  a  god.  If  they 
saw  you  trying  to  produce  the  Merchant  of  Venice  they'd 
be  bored  and  they  wouldn't  think  so  any  more." 

"  Have  you  any  objection,"  said  Jeff,  "  to  my  trying  to 
produce  the  Merchant  of  Venice  with  English-speaking 
children  of  foreigners?" 

"  Not  a  grain,"  said  Madame  Beattie  cordially. 
"  There's  your  chance.  Or  you  can  get  up  a  pageant,  if 
you  like-,  another  summer.  But  you'll  have  to  let  these 
people  act  their  own  historic  events  in  their  own  way. 
And,  Jeff,  don't  be  a  fool."  They  were  standing  before 
her  door  and  Esther  at  the  darkened  window  above  was 
looking  down  on  them.  Esther  had  not  gone  to  the  dances 
because  she  knew  who  would  be  there.  She  told  herself 
she  was  afraid  of  seeing  Jeff  and  because  she  had  said  it 
often  enough  she  believed  it.  "  Tell  Lydia  to  come  to  see 
me  to-morrow,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  Sophy  had  opened 
the  door.  It  came  open  quite  easily  now  since  the  night 
Madame  Beattie  had  called  Esther's  name  aloud  in  the 
street.  Jeff  took  off  his  hat  and  turned  away.  He  did 
not  mean  to  tell  Lydia.  She  saw  enough  of  Madame 
Beattie,  without  instigation. 


XXVIII 

Lydia  needed  no  reminder  to  go  to  Madame  Beattie. 
The  next  day,  in  the  early  afternoon,  she  was  taking  her 
unabashed  course  by  the  back  stairs  to  Madame  Beattie's 
bedchamber.  She  would  not  allow  herself  to  be  embar 
rassed  or  ashamed.  If  Esther  treated  Madame  Beattie 
with  a  proper  hospitality,  she  reasoned  when  her  mind 
misgave  her,  it  would  not  be  necessary  to  enter  by  a  furtive 
way.  Madame  Beattie  was  dressed  and  in  a  high  state  of 
exhilaration.  She  beckoned  Lydia  to  her  where  she  sat 
by  a  window  commanding  the  street,  and  laid  a  hand  upon 
her  wrist. 

u  I've  actually  done  it,"  said  she.  "  I've  got  on  her 
nerves.  She's  going  away." 

The  clouds  over  Lydia  seemed  to  lift.  Yet  it  was  in 
credible  that  Esther,  this  charming  sinister  figure  always 
in  the  background  or  else  blocking  everybody's  natural 
movements,  should  really  take  herself  elsewhere. 

"  It's  only  to  New  York,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "  She 
tells  me  that  much.  But  she's  going  because  I've  ran 
sacked  her  room  till  she  sees  I'm  bound  to  find*  the  neck 
lace." 

Lydia  was  tired  from  the  night  before ;  her  vitality  was 
low  enough  to  waken  in  her  the  involuntary  rebuttal,  "  I 
don't  believe  there  is  any  necklace."  But  she  only  passed 
a  hand  over  her  forehead  and  pushed  up  her  hair  and  then 
drew  a  little  chair  to  Madame  Beattie's  side. 

"  So  you  think  she'll  come  back  ?  "  she  asked  drearily. 

317 


318  THE  PRISONER 

"  Of  course.  She's  only  going  for  a  couple  of  days. 
You  don't  suppose  she'd  leave  me  here  to  conspire  with 
Susan?  She'll  put  the  necklace  into  a  safe.  That's  all." 

"  But  you  mustn't  let  her,  must  you?  " 

"  Oh,  I  sha'n't  let  her.     Of  course  I  sha'n't." 

"What  shall  you  do?" 

"  She's  not  going  till  night.  She  takes  Sophy,  of 
course." 

"  But  what  can  you  do?  " 

"  I  shall  consult  that  dirty  little  man.  He's  a  lawyer 
and  he's  not  in  love  with  her." 

"Mr.  Moore?  You  haven't  much  time,  Madame 
Beattie.  She'll  be  going." 

"  That's  why  I'm  dressed,"  said  Madame  Beattie. 
66 1  shall  go  in  a  minute.  He  can  give  me  a  warrant  or 
something  to  search  her  things." 

Lydia  went  at  once,  with  a  noiseless  foot.  She  felt  a 
sudden  distaste  for  the  accomplished  fact  of  Esther  face 
to  face  with  justice.  Yet  she  did  not  flinch  in  her  cer 
tainty  that  nemesis  must  be  obeyed  and  even  aided.  Only 
the  secrecy  of  it  led  her  to  a  hatred  of  her  own  silent  ways 
in  the  house,  and  as  she  often  did,  she  turned  to  her  right 
instead  of  to  her  left  and  walked  to  the  front  stairs. 
There  at  her  hand  was  Esther's  room,  the  door  wide  open. 
Downstairs  she  could  hear  her  voice  in  colloquy  with 
Sophy.  Rhoda's  voice,  on  this  floor,  made  some  curt 
remark.  Everybody  was  accounted  for.  Lydia's  heart 
was  choking  her,  but  she  stepped  softly  into  Esther's  room. 
It  seemed  to  her,  in  her  quickened  feeling,  that  she  could 
see  clairvoyantly  through  the  matter  that  kept  her  from 
her  quest.  A  travelling  bag,  open,  stood  on  the  floor. 
There  was  a  hand-bag  on  the  bed,  and  Lydia,  as  if  taking 
a  predestined  step,  went  to  it,  slipped  the  clasp  and  looked. 
A  purse  was  there,  a  tiny  mirror,  a  book  that  might  have 


THE  PRISONER  319 

been  an  address  book,  and  in  the  bottom  a  roll  of  tissue 
paper.  Nothing  could  have  .stopped  her  now.  She  had 
to  know  what  was  in  the  roll.  It  was  a  lumpy  parcel, 
thrown  together  in  haste  as  if,  perhaps,  Esther  had 
thought  of  making  it  look  as  if  it  were  of  no  account.  She 
tore  it  open  and  found,  with  no  surprise,  as  if  this  were 
an  old  dream,  the  hard  brightness  of  the  jewels. 

"  There  it  is,"  she  whispered  to  herself,  with  the  scant 
breath  her  choking  heart  would  lend  her.  "  Oh,  there  it 
is!" 

She  rolled  the  necklace  in  its  paper  and  closed  the  bag. 
With  no  precaution  she  walked  out  of  the  room  and  down 
the  stairs.  The  voices  still  went  on,  Esther's  and  Sophy's 
from  the  library,  and  she  did  not  know  whether  Madame 
Beattie  had  already  left  the  house.  But  opening  the  front 
door,  still  with  no  precaution,  she  closed  it  sharply  behind 
her  and  walked  along  the  street  in  sunshine  that  hurt  her 
eyes. 

Lydia  went  straight  home,  not  thinking  at  all  about 
what  she  had  done,  but  wondering  what  she  should  do  now. 
Suddenly  she  felt  the  unfriendliness  of  the  world.  Madame 
Beattie,  her  ally  up  to  this  moment,  was  now  a  foe.  For 
whether  justly  or  not,  Madame  Beattie  would  claim  the 
necklace,  and  how  could  Lydia  know  Jeff  had  not  already 
paid  her  for  it  ?  And  Anne,  soft,  sweet  Anne,  what  would 
she  do  if  Lydia  threw  it  in  her  lap  and  said,  "  Look !  I 
took  it  out  of  Esther's  bag."  She  was  thinking  very 
clearly,  it  seemed  to  her,  and  the  solution  that  looked  most 
like  a  high  business  sagacity  made  it  likely  that  she  ought 
to  carry  it  to  Alston  Choate.  He  was  her  lawyer.  And 
yet  indeed  he  was  not,  for  he  did  nothing  for  her.  He  was 
only  playing  with  her,  to  please  Anne.  But  all  the  while 
she  was  debating  her  feet  carried  her  to  the  only  person 
she  had  known  they  would  inevitably  seek.  She  went 


320  THE  PRISONER 

directly  upstairs  to  Jeffrey's  room  where  he  might  be  writ 
ing  at  that  hour. 

He  was  there.  His  day's  work  had  gone  well.  He  was 
beginning  to  have  the  sense  the  writer  sometimes  has,  in 
a  fortunate  hour,  of  divine  intention  in  his  task.  Jeff 
was  enjoying  an  egoistic  interlude  of  feeling  that  the 
things  which  had  happened  to  him  had  been  personally  in 
tended  to  bring  him  to  a  certain  deed.  The  richness  of 
the  world  was  crowding  on  him,  the  bigness  of  it,  the  dan 
gers.  He  could  scarcely  choose,  among  such  diversities, 
what  to  say.  And  dominating  everything  he  had  to  say  in 
the  compass  of  this  one  book  was  the  sense  of  life,  life  at 
its  full,  and  the  stupidity  of  calling  such  a  world  bare  of 
wonders.  And  to  him  in  his  half  creative,  half  exulting 
dream  came  Lydia,  her  face  drawn  to  an  extremity  of  what 
looked  like  apprehension.  Or  was  it  triumph?  She  might 
have  been  under  the  influence  of  a  drug  that  had  induced 
in  her  a  wild  excitement  and  at  the  same  time  strung  her 
nerves  to  highest  pitch.  Jeff,  looking  up  at  her,  pushed 
his  papers  back. 

"What  is  it?"  he  asked. 

Lydia,  for  answer,  moved  up  to  his  table  and  placed  the 
parcel  there  before  him.  It  was  the  more  shapeless  and 
disordered  from  the  warm  clutch  of  her  despairing  hand. 
He  took  it  up  and  carelessly  unrolled  it.  The  paper 
lay  open  in  his  palm;  he  saw  and  dropped  the  neck 
lace  to  the  table.  There  it  lay,  glittering  up  at  him. 
Lydia  might  have  expected  some  wondering  or  tragic  ex 
clamation  ;  but  she  did  not  get  it.  He  was  astonished. 
He  said  quite  simply: 

"  Aunt  Patricia's  necklace."  Then  he  looked  up  at  her, 
and  their  eyes  met,  hers  with  desperate  expectation  and 
his  holding  her  gaze  in  an  unmoved  questioning.  "  Did 
she  give  it  to  you  ?  "  he  asked,  and  she  shook  her  head  with 


THE  PRISONER  321 

a  negation  almost  imperceptible.     "  No,"  said  Jeffrey  to 
himself.     "  She  didn't  have  it.     Who  did  have  it?  " 

He  let  it  lie  on  the  table  before  him  and  gazed  at  the 
bauble  in  a  strong  distaste.  Here  it  was  again,  a  nothing 
ness  coming  between  him  and  his  vision  of  the  real  things 
of  the  earth.  It  seemed  singularly  trivial  to  him,  and  yet 
powerful,  too,  because  he  knew  how  it  had  moved  men's 
minds. 

"  Where  did  you  get  it?  "  he  asked,  looking  up  at  Lydia. 

Something  inside  her  throat  had  swollen.  She  swal 
lowed  over  it  with  difficulty  before  she  spoke.  But  she  did 
speak. 

"  I  took  it." 

"Took  it?" 

He  got  up,  and,  with  a  belated  courtesy,  pulled  forward 
a  chair.  But  Lydia  did  not  see  it.  Her  eyes  were  fixed  on 
his  face,  as  if  in  its  changes  would  lie  her  destiny. 

"  You  mean  you  found  it." 

"  No.     I  didn't  find  it.     I  took  it." 

"  You  must  have  found  it  first." 

"  I  looked  for  it,"  said  Lydia. 

"Where?" 

"  In  Esther's  bag." 

Jeffrey  stood  staring  at  her,  and  Lydia  unwinkingly 
stared  at  him.  She  was  conscious  of  but  one  desire :  that 
he  would  not  scowl  so.  And  yet  she  knew  it  was  the  effort 
of  attention  and  no  hostile  sign.  He  spoke  now,  and 
gently  because  he  saw  how  great  a  strain  she  was  under. 

"  You'll  have  to  tell  me  about  it,  Lydia.  Where  was  the 
bag?  " 

"  It  was  on  her  bed,"  said  Lydia.  "  I  went  into  the 
room  and  saw  it  there.  Madame  Beattie  told  me  she  was 
going  to  New  York  — " 

"  That  Madame  Beattie  was?  " 


THE  PRISONER 

"  No.  Esther.  To  hide  the  necklace.  So  Madame 
Beattie  shouldn't  get  it.  And  I  saw  the  bag.  And  I  knew 
the  necklace  must  be  in  it.  So  I  took  it." 

By  this  time  her  hands  were  shaking  and  her  lips  chat 
tered  piteously.  Jeffrey  was  wholly  perplexed,  but  bit 
terly  sorry  for  her. 

"  What  made  you  bring  it  here,  dear?  "  said  he. 

Lydia  caught  at  the  endearing  word,  and  something  like 
a  spasm  moved  her  face. 

"  I  had  to,"  said  she.     "  It  has  made  all  the  trouble." 

"  But  I  don't  want  it,"  said  Jeffrey.  "  Whatever  trou 
ble  it  made  is  over  and  done  with.  However  this  came 
into  Esther's  hands  — " 

"  Oh,  I  know  how  that  was,"  said  Lydia.  "  She  stole 
it.  Madame  Beattie  says  so." 

"  And  whatever  she  is  going  to  do  with  it  now  —  that 
isn't  a  matter  for  me  to  meddle  with." 

"  Don't  you  care?  "  said  Lydia,  in  a  passionate  outcry. 
"  Now  you've  got  it  in  your  hand,  don't  you  care?  " 

"  Why,"  said  Jeff,  "  what  could  I  do  with  it?  " 

"  If  you  know  it's  Madame  Beattie's,  you  can  take  it 
to  her  and  tell  her  she  can  go  back  to  Europe  and  stop 
hounding  you  for  money." 

"  How  do  you  know  she's  hounded  me?  " 

"  She  says  so.  She  wants  you  to  get  into  politics  and 
into  business  and  pay  her  back." 

"  But  that's  what  you've  wanted  me  to  do  yourself." 

"  Oh,"  said  Lydia,  in  a  great  breath  of  despairing  love, 
"  I  want  you  to  do  what  you  want  to.  I  want  you  to  sit 
here  at  this  table  and  write.  Because  then  you  look 
happy.  And  you  don't  look  so  any  other  time." 

Jeff  stood  gazing  at  her  in  a  compassion  that  brought 
a  smart  to  his  eyes.  This,  a  sad  certainty  told  him,  was 
love,  the  love  that  is  unthinking.  She  was  suffocated  by 


THE  PRISONER  323 

the  pure  desire  to  give  the  earth  to  him  and  herself  with 
it.  What  disaster  might  come  from  it  to  her  or  to  the 
earth,  her  lulled  brain  did  not  consider.  The  self-immola 
tion  of  passion  had  benumbed  her.  And  now  she  looked 
at  him  beseechingly,  as  if  to  beg  him  only  not  to  scorn  her 
gift.  Her  emotion  transferred  itself  to  him.  He  must 
be  the  one  to  act ;  but  disappointingly,  he  knew,  with  the 
mind  coming  in  to  school  disastrous  feeling  and  warn  it 
not  again  to  scale  such  heights  or  drop  into  such  depths. 

"  Lydia,"  said  he,  "  you  must  leave  this  thing  here  with 
me."  " 

His  hand  indicated  by  a  motion  the  hateful  bauble  that 
lay  there  glittering  at  them. 

"  Why,  yes,"  said  she.     "  I've  left  it  with  you." 

"  I  mean  you  must  leave  it  altogether,  the  decision  what 
to  do  with  it,  even  the  fact  of  your  having  had  anything 
whatever  to  do  with  it  yourself." 

Lydia  nodded,  watching  him.  It  had  not  occurred  to 
her  that  there  need  be  any  concealment.  She  had  meant 
to  indicate  that  to  herself  when  she  walked  so  boldly  down 
the  front  stairs  and  clanged  the  door  and  went  along  the 
street  with  the  parcel  plainly  in  her  hand.  If  there  was 
a  slight  drop  in  her  expectation  now,  she  did  not  show 
it.  What  she  had  indeed  believed  was  that  Jeff  would 
greet  the  necklace  with  an  incredulous  joy  and  flaunt  it  in 
the  face  of  Esther  who  had  stolen  it,  while  he  gave  it  back 
to  Madame  Beattie,  who  had  preyed  on  him. 

"  Do  you  understand?  "  said  he.  "  You  mustn't  speak 
of  it." 

"  I  shall  have  to  tell,"  said  Lydia,  "  if  anybody  asks 
me.  If  I  didn't  it  would  be  —  queer." 

"  It's  a  great  deal  more  than  queer,"  said  Jeff. 

He  smiled  now,  and  she  drew  a  happy  breath.  And  he 
was  amused,  in  a  grim  way.  He  had  been,  for  a  long 


324  THE  PRISONER 

time,  calling  himself  plain  thief,  and  taking  no  credit  be 
cause  his  theft  was  what  might  have  seemed  a  crime  of 
passion  of  a  sort.  He  had  put  himself  "  outside  ",  and 
now  this  child  had  committed  a  crime  of  passion  and  she 
was  outside,  too.  Her  ignorant  daring  frightened  him. 
At  any  instant  she  might  declare  her  guilt.  She  needed 
to  be  brought  face  to  face,  for  her  own  safety,  with  the 
names  of  things. 

"  Lydia,"  said  he,  "  you  know  what  it  would  be  called 
—  this  taking  something  out  of  another  woman's  bag?  " 

"  No,"  said  Lydia. 

"  Theft,"  said  he.  He  meant  to  have  no  mercy  on  her 
until  he  had  roused  her  dormant  caution.  "  If  you  take 
what  is  not  yours  you  are  a  thief." 

"  But,"  said  Lydia,  "  I  took  it  from  Esther  and  it  wasn't 
hers,  either."  She  was  unshaken  in  her  candour,  but  he 
noted  the  trembling  of  her  lip  and  he  could  go  no  further. 

"  Leave  it  with  me,"  he  said.  "  And  promise  me  one 
thing.  Don't  speak  to  anybody  about  it." 

"  Unless  they  ask  me,"  said  Lydia. 

"  Not  even  if  they  ask  you.  Go  to  your  room  and  shut 
yourself  in.  And  don't  talk  to  anybody  till  I  see  you 
again." 

She  turned  obediently,  and  her  slender  back  moved  him 
with  a  compassion  it  would  have  been  madness  to  recognise. 
The  plain  man  in  him  was  in  physical  rebellion  against  the 
rules  of  life  that  made  it  criminal  to  take  a  sweet  creature 
like  this  into  your  arms  to  comfort  her  when  she  most 
needed  it  and  pour  out  upon  her  your  gratitude  and  ad 
oration. 

Jeff  took  the  necklace  and  its  bed  of  crumpled  paper 
with  it,  wrapped  it  up  and,  holding  it  in  his  hand  as  Lydia 
had  done,  walked  downstairs,  got  his  hat  and  went  off  to 


THE  PRISONER  325 

Esther's.  What  he  could  do  there  he  did  not  fully  know, 
save  to  fulfil  the  immediate  need  of  putting  the  jewels  into 
some  hand  more  ready  for  them  than  his  own.  He  had 
no  slightest  wish  to  settle  the  rights  of  the  case  in  any 
way  whatever.  "  Then,"  his  mind  was  saying  in  spite  of 
him,  "  Esther  did  have  the  necklace."  But  even  that  he 
was  horribly  unwilling  to  face.  There  was  no  Esther 
now ;  but  he  hated,  from  a  species  of  decency,  to  drag  out 
the  bright  dream  that  had  been  Esther  and  smear  it  over 
with  these  blackening  certainties.  "  Let  be,"  his  young 
self  cried  to  him.  "  She  was  at  least  a  part  of  youth,  and 
youth  was  dear."  Why  should  she  be  pilloried  since  youth 
must  stand  fettered  with  her  for  the  old  wrongs  that  were 
a  part  of  the  old  imagined  sweetness?  The  sweetnesses 
and  the  wrongs  had  grown  together  like  roots  inextricably 
mingled.  To  tear  out  the  weeds  you  would  rend  also  the 
roots  they  twined  among. 

In  a  stern  musing  he  was  at  Esther's  door  before  he  had 
decided  what  to  say,  had  knocked  and  Sophy,  large-eyed 
and  shaken  out  of  her  specious  calm,  had  admitted  him. 
She  did  not  question  him  nor  did  Jeffrey  even  ask  for 
Esther.  With  the  opening  of  the  door  he  heard  voices, 
and  now  the  sound  of  an  angry  crying,  and  Sophy  herself 
had  the  air  of  an  unwilling  servitor  at  a  strange  occasion. 
Jeffrey,  standing  in  the  doorway  of  the  library,  faced  the 
group  there.  Esther  was  seated  on  a  low  chair,  her  face 
crumpled  and  red,  as  if  she  had  just  wiped  it  free  of  tears. 
The  handkerchief,  clutched  into  a  ball  in  her  angry  fist, 
gave  further  evidence.  Madame  Beattie,  enormously 
amused,  sat  in  the  handsome  straight-backed  chair  that 
became  her  most,  and  unaffectedly  and  broadly  smiled. 
And  Alston  Choate,  rather  pale  in  a  sternness  of  judicial 
consideration,  stood,  hands  in  his  pockets,  and  regarded 


S26  THE  PRISONER 

them.  At  Jeffrey's  entrance  they  looked  up  at  him  and 
Esther  instantly  sprang  to  her  feet  and  retreated  to  a  posi 
tion  at  the  right  of  Choate,  where  he  might  be  conceived 
of  as  standing  in  the  position  of  tacitly  protecting  her. 
Jeff,  the  little  parcel  in  his  hand,  advanced  upon  them. 

"  Here  is  the  necklace,"  said  he,  in  a  perfectly  common 
place  tone.  "  I  suppose  that's  what  you  are  talking 
about." 

Esther's  eyes,  by  the  burning  force  he  felt  in  them, 
seemed  to  draw  his,  and  he  looked  at  her,  as  if  to  inquire 
what  was  to  be  done  with  it  now  it  was  here.  Esther  did 
not  wait  for  any  one  to  put  that  question.  She  spoke 
sharply,  as  if  the  words  leaped  to  utterance. 

"  The  necklace  was  stolen.  It  was  taken  out  of  this 
house.  Who  took  it?" 

Jeffrey  had  not  for  a  moment  wondered  whether  he  might 
be  asked.     But  now  he  saw  Lydia  as  he  had  left  her,  in 
her  childish  misery,  and  answered  instantly : 
i      "  I  took  it." 

i      Alston  Choate  gave  a  little  exclamation,  of  amazement, 
of  disgust.     Then  he  drew  the  matter  into  his  own  judicial 
hands. 
,      "  Where  did  you  take  it  from  ?  "  he  asked. 

Jeffrey  looked  at  him  in  a  grave  consideration.  Alston 
Choate  seemed  to  him  a  negligible  quantity ;  so  did  Esther 
and  so  did  Madame  Beattie.  All  he  wanted  was  to  clear 
the  slender  shoulders  of  poor  savage,  wretched  Lydia  at 
home. 

"  Do  you  mind  telling  me,  Jeffrey  ?  "  Alston  was  asking, 
in  quite  a  human  way  considering  that  he  embodied  the 
majesty  of  the  law.  "  You  couldn't  have  walked  into  this 
house  and  taken  a  thing  which  didn't  belong  to  you  and 
carried  it  away." 

His  tone  was  rather  a  chaffing  one,  a  recall  to  the  inter- 


THE  PRISONER 

course  of  everyday  life.  "  Be  advised,"  it  said.  '*  Don't 
carry  a  dull  joke  too  far." 

"  Certainly  I  took  it,"  said  Jeffrey,  smiling  at  Alston 
broadly.  He  was  amused  now,  little  more.  He  saw  how 
his  background  of  wholesale  thievery  would  serve  him  in 
the  general  eye.  Not  old  Alston's.  He  did  not  think 
for  a  moment  Alston  would  believe  him,  but  it  seemed  more 
or  less  of  a  grim  joke  to  ask  him  to.  "  Don't  you  know," 
he  said,  "I'm  an  ex-convict?  Once  a  jailbird,  always  a 
jailbird.  Remember  your  novels,  Choate.  You  know 
more  about  'em  than  you  do  about  law  anyway." 

Then  he  saw,  with  a  shock,  that  Alston  really  did  believe 
him.  He  also  knew  at  the  same  instant  why.  Esther  was 
pouring  the  unspoken  flood  of  her  persuasion  upon  him. 
Jeff  could  almost  feel  the  whiff  and  wind  of  the  tempera 
mental  rush.  He  knew  how  Esther's  belief  set  upon  you 
like  an  army  with  banners  when  she  wanted  you  also  to 
believe.  And  still  he  held  the  little  crumpled  packet  in  his 
hand. 

"  Will  you  open  it  ?  "  Alston  asked  him,  with  a  gentle 
ness  of  courtesy  that  indicated  he  was  sorry  indeed,  and 
Jeffrey  laid  it  on  the  table,  unrolled  the  paper  and  let 
the  bauble  lie  there  drinking  in  the  light  and  throwing  it 
off  again  a  million  times  enhanced.  Alston  advanced  to 
it  and  gravely  looked  down  upon  it  without  touching  it. 
Madame  Beattie  turned  upon  it  a  cursory  gaze,  and  gave 
a  nod  that  seemed  to  accept  its  identity.  But  Esther 
did  not  look  at  all.  She  put  her  hand  on  the  table  to  sus 
tain  herself,  and  her  burning  eyes  never  once  left  Alston's 
face.  He  looked  round  at  her. 

"  Is  this  it?  "  he  asked. 

She  nodded. 

"  Are  you  sure?  " 

"  Of  course  I'm  sure,"  said  Esther. 


328  THE  PRISONER 

She  seemed  to  ask  how  a  woman  could  doubt  the  identity 
of  a  trinket  she  had  clasped  about  her  neck  a  thousand 
times,  and  pored  over  while  it  lay  in  some  hidden  nest. 

"  Ask  her,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  in  her  tiniest  lisp, 
"  if  the  necklace  is  hers." 

There  flashed  into  Alston  Choate's  mind  the  picture  of 
Lydia,  as  she  came  to  his  office  that  day  in  the  early  sum 
mer,  to  bring  her  childish  accusation  against  Esther.  The 
incident  had  been  neatly  pigeonholed,  but  only  as  it  af 
fected  Anne.  It  could  not  affect  Esther,  he  had  known 
then,  with  a  leap  at  certainty  measured  by  his  belief  in  her. 
The  belief  had  been  big  enough  to  offset  all  possible 
evidence. 

"  Ask  her,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  with  relish,  "  where 
she  got  it." 

When  Esther  had  cried  a  little  at  the  beginning  of  the 
interview,  the  low  lamenting  had  moved  him  beyond  hope 
of  endurance,  and  he  had  wondered  what  he  could  do  if 
she  kept  on  crying.  But  now  she  drew  herself  up  and 
looked,  not  at  him,  but  at  Madame  Beattie. 

"  How  dare  you?  "  she  said,  in  a  low  tone,  not  convinc 
ingly  to  the  ears  of  those  who  had  heard  it  said  better  on 
the  stage,  yet  with  a  reproving  passion  adequate  to  the 
case. 

But  Alston  asked  no  further  questions.  Madame 
Beattie  went  amicably  on. 

"  Mr.  Choate,  this  matter  of  the  necklace  is  a  family 
affair.  Why  don't  you  run  away  and  let  Jeffrey  and  his 
wife  —  and  me,  you  know  —  let  us  settle  it  ?  " 

Alston,  dismissed,  forgot  he  had  been  summoned  and 
that  Esther  might  be  still  depending  on  him.  He  turned 
about  to  the  door,  but  she  recalled  him. 

"  Don't  go,"  she  said.  The  words  were  all  in  one  breath. 
"  Don't  go  far.  I  am  afraid." 


THE  PRISONER  329 

He  hesitated,  and  Jeffrey  said  equably  but  still  with  a 
grim  amusement : 

"  I  think  you'd  better  go." 

So  he  went  out  of  the  room  and  Esther  was  left  between 
her  two  inquisitors. 


XXIX 

That  she  did  look  upon  Jeff  as  her  tormentor  he  could 
see.  She  took  a  darting  step  to  the  door,  but  he  was 
closing  it. 

"  Wait  a  minute,"  he  said.  "  There  are  one  or  two 
things  we've  got  to  get  at.  Where  did  you  find  the  neck 
lace?  " 

She  met  his  look  immovably,  in  the  softest  obstinacy. 
It  smote  him  like  a  blow.  There  was  something  impla 
cable  in  it,  too,  an  aversion  almost  as  fierce  as  hate. 

"  This  is  the  necklace,"  he  went  on.  "  It  was  lost,  you 
know.  Where  did  you  find  it,  Esther?  " 

But  suddenly  Esther  remembered  she  had  a  counter 
charge  to  make. 

"  You  have  broken  into  this  house,"  she  said,  "  and 
taken  it.  If  it  is  Aunt  Patricia's,  you  have  taken  it  from 
her." 

"  No,"  said  Aunt  Patricia  easily,  "  it  isn't  altogether 
mine.  Jeff  made  me  a  payment  on  it  a  good  many  years 
ago." 

Esther  turned  upon  her. 

"  He  paid  you  for  it?     When?  " 

"  He  paid  me  something,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "  Not 
the  value  of  the  necklace.  That  was  when  you  stole  it, 
Esther.  He  meant  to  pay  me  the  full  value.  He  will, 
in  time.  But  he  paid  me  what  he  could  to  keep  you  from 
being  found  out.  Hush  money,  Esther." 

Queer  things  were  going  on  in  Jeff's  mind.  The  neck 
lace,  no  matter  what  its  market  price,  seemed  to  him  of  no 

330 


THE  PRISONER  '331 

value  whatever  in  itself.  There  it  lay,  a  glittering  gaud; 
but  he  had  seen  a  piece  of  glass  that  threw  out  colours  as 
divinely.  Certainly  the  dew  was  brighter.  But  as  evi 
dence,  it  was  very  important  indeed.  The  world  was  a 
place,  he  realised,  where  we  play  with  counters  such  as  this. 
They  enable  us  to  speak  a  language.  When  Esther  had 
stolen  it,  the  loss  had  not  been  so  much  the  loss  of  the 
gems  as  of  his  large  trust  in  her.  When  Madame  Beattie 
had  threatened  him  with  exposing  her  he  had  not  paid  her 
what  he  could  because  the  gems  were  priceless,  but  that 
Esther's  reputation  was.  And  so  he  had  learned  that 
Madame  Beattie  was  unscrupulous.  What  was  he  learn 
ing  now  ?  Nothing  new  about  Madame  Beattie,  but  some 
thing  astounding  about  Esther.  The  first  upheaval  of  his 
faith  had  merely  caused  him  to  adjust  himself  to  a  new 
sort  of  Esther,  though  only  to  the  old  idea  of  women  as 
most  other  men  had  had  the  sense  to  take  them:  children, 
destitute  of  moral  sense  and  its  practical  applications, 
immature  mammals  desperately  in  love  with  enhancing 
baubles.  He  had  not  believed  then  that  Esther  lied  to 
him.  She  had,  he  was  too  sure  for  questioning,  actually 
lost  the  thing.  But  she  had  not  lost  it.  She  had  hidden 
it,  with  an  inexplicable  purpose,  for  all  these  years. 

"  Esther !  "  he  said.  She  lifted  her  head  slightly,  but 
gave  no  other  sign  of  hearing.  "  We'll  give  this  back  to 
Madame  Beattie." 

"No,  you  won't,  Jeff,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "I'd 
rather  have  the  money  for  it.  Just  as  soon  as  you  get 
into  the  swing  again,  you'll  pay  me  a  little  on  the  transac 
tion." 

"  Sell  the  damned  thing  then,  if  you  don't  want  it  and  do 
want  money,"  said  Jeff.  "  You've  got  it  back." 

"  I  can't  sell  it."  She  had  half  closed  her  eyes,  and  her 
lips  gave  an  unctious  little  relish  to  the  words. 


332  THE  PRISONER 

I      "Why  can't  you?" 

"  My  dear  Jeffrey,  because,  when  the  Royal  Personage 
who  gave  it  to  me  was  married,  I  signed  certain  papers  in 
connection  with  this  necklace  and  I  can't  sell  it,  either  as 
a  whole  or  piecemeal.  I  assure  you  I  can't." 

"  Very  well,"  said  Jeff.  "  That's  probably  poppycock, 
invented  for  the  occasion.  But  you've  got  your  necklace. 
There  it  is.  Make  the  most  of  it.  I  never  shall  pay  you 
another  cent." 

"  Oh,  yes,  you  will,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  She  was 
unclasping  and  clasping  a  bracelet  on  her  small  wrist,  and 
she  looked  up  at  him  idly  and  in  a  perfect  enjoyment  of 
the  scene.  "  Don't  you  want  to  pay  me  for  not  continu 
ing  my  reminiscences  in  that  horrid  little  man's  paper? 
Here's  the  second  chapter  of  the  necklace.  It  was  stolen. 
You  come  walking  in  here  and  say  you've  stolen  it  again. 
But  where  from?  Out  of  Esther's  hand-bag.  Do  you 
want  the  dirty  little  man  to  print  that?  Necklace  found 
in  Mrs.  Jeffrey  Blake's  hand-bag?  " 

Jeff  was  looking  at  her  sharply. 

"  I  never  said  I  took  it  from  a  hand-bag,"  he  rejoined. 

Madame  Beattie  broke  down  and  laughed.  She  gave  the 
bracelet  a  final  snap. 

"  You're  quite  a  clever  boy,"  said  she.  "  Alston  Choate 
wouldn't  have  seen  that  if  he'd  hammered  at  it  a  week. 
Yes,  it  was  in  Esther's  bag.  I  don't  care  much  how  it  got 
out.  The  question  is,  how  did  it  get  in?  How  are  you 
going  to  shield  Esther  ?  " 

He  was  aware  that  Esther  was  looking  at  him  in  a 
breathless  waiting.  The  hatred,  he  knew,  must  have  gone 
out  of  her  face.  She  was  the  abject  human  animal  be 
seeching  mercy  from  the  stronger.  That  she  could  ask 
him  whom  she  had  repudiated  to  stand  by  her  in  her  dis- 
,  tress,  hurt  him  like  a  personal  degradation.  Bui  he  was 


THE  PRISONER  333 

sorry  for  her,  and  he  would  fight.  He  answered  roughly, 
at  a  venture,  and  he  felt  her  start.  Yet  the  roughness  was 
not  for  her. 

"  No.  I  shall  do  nothing  whatever,"  he  said,  and  heard 
her  little  cry  and  Madame  Beattie's  assured  tone 
following  it,  with  an  uncertainty  whether  he  had  done 
well. 

"You're  quite  decided?"  Madame  Beattie  was  giving 
him  one  more  chance.  "  You're  going  to  let  Esther  serve 
her  time  in  the  dirty  little  man's  paper  ?  It'll  be  something 
more  than  publicity  here.  My  word !  Her  name  will  fly 
over  the  globe." 

He  heard  Esther's  quick  breathing  nearer  and  nearer, 
and  then  he  felt  her  hand  on  his  arm.  She  had  crept 
closer,  involuntarily,  he  could  believe,  but  drawn  by  the 
instinct  to  be  saved.  He  felt  his  own  heart  beating 
thickly,  with  sorrow  for  her,  an  agonising  ruth  that  she 
should  have  to  sue  to  him.  But  he  spoke  sharply,  not 
looking  at  her,  his  eyes  on  Madame  Beattie's. 

"  I  shall  not  assume  the  slightest  responsibility  in  the 
matter.  I  have  told  you  I  took  the  necklace.  You  can 
say  that  in  Weedon  Moore's  paper  till  you  are  both  of  you 
— "  he  paused. 

The  hand  was  resting  on  his  arm,  and  Esther's  breath 
ing  presence  choked  him  with  a  sense  of  the  strangeness  of 
things  and  the  poignant  suffering  in  mere  life. 

"  I  sha'n't  mention  you,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "  I 
know  who  took  the  necklace." 

"What?" 

His  movement  must  have  shaken  the  touch  on  his  arm, 
for  Esther's  hand  fell. 

16  You  don't  suppose  I'm  a  fool,  do  you  ? "  inquired 
Madame  Beattie.  "  I  knew  it  was  going  to  happen.  I 
saw  the  whole  thing." 


334  THE  PRISONER 

"  Then,"  said  Esther,  slipping  away  from  him  a  pace, 
"  you  didn't  do  it  after  all." 

If  he  had  not  been  so  shaken  by  Madame  Beattie's 
words  he  could  have  laughed  with  the  grim  humour  of  it. 
Esther  was  sorry  he  had  not  done  it. 

"  So,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  "  you'd  better  think  twice 
about  it.  I'll  give  you  time.  But  I  shall  assuredly  pub 
lish  the  name  of  the  person  who  took  the  necklace  out  of 
Esther's  bag,  as  well  as  the  fact  that  it  had  to  be  in 
Esther's  bag  or  it  couldn't  have  been  taken  out.  Two 
thieves,  Jeff.  You'd  better  think  twice." 

"  Yes,"  said  Jeff.  "  I  will  think.  Is  it  understood?  " 
He  walked  over  to  her  and  stood  there  looking  down  at 
her. 

She  glanced  pleasantly  up  at  him. 

"  Of  course,  my  dear  boy,"  she  said.  "  I  shouldn't 
dream  of  saying  a  word  —  till  you've  thought  twice.  But 
you  must  think  quick,  Jeff.  I  can't  wait  forever." 

"  I  swear,"  said  Jeff,  "  you  are  — "  Neither  words  nor 
breath  failed  him,  but  he  was  afraid  of  his  own  passion. 

Madame  Beattie  laughed. 

"  Jeff,"  said  she,  "  I've  no  visible  means  of  support. 
If  I  had  I  should  be  as  mild  —  you  can't  think !  " 

He  turned  and,  without  a  look  at  Esther,  strode  out  of 
the  room.  Esther  hardly  waited  for  the  door  to  close 
behind  him  before  she  fell  upon  Madame  Beattie. 

"  Who  did  it?  "  she  cried.     "  That  woman?  " 

Madame  Beattie  was  exploring  a  little  box  for  a  tablet, 
which  she  took  composedly. 

66  What  woman  ?  "  she  asked. 

"  That  woman  upstairs." 

"  Rhoda  Knox?  God  bless  me,  no!  Rhoda  Knox 
wouldn't  steal  a  button.  She's  New  England  to  the  bone." 

"Sophy?" 


THE  PRISONER  335 

"  Esther,  you're  a  fool.  Why  don't  you  let  me  manage 
Jeff  in  my  own  way?  You  won't  manage  him  yourself." 
She  got  up  with  a  clashing  of  little  chains  and  yawned 
broadly.  "  Don't  forget  Alston  Choate  sitting  in  the 
dining-room  waiting  like  a  messenger  boy." 

"  In  the  dining-room  ?  " 

"Yes.  Did  you  think  he'd  go?  He's  waiting  there 
to  hear  Jeff  assault  you,  and  come  to  the  rescue.  You 
told  him  you  were  afraid."  She  was  on  her  way  to 
the  door,  but  she  turned.  "  I  may  as  well  take  this,"  she 
said  idly,  and  swept  the  necklace  into  her  hand.  She  held 
it  up  and  shook  it  in  the  light,  and  Esther's  eyes,  as  she 
knew  they  would,  dwelt  on  it  with  a  hungry  passion. 

"  You  are  taking  it  away,"  said  Esther.  "  You've  no 
right  to.  He  said  he  had  paid  you  money  on  it  when  it 
was  lost.  If  he  did,  it  belongs  to  him.  And  I'm  his  wife." 

"  I  might  as  well  take  it  with  me,"  said  Madame  Beattie. 
"  You  don't  act  as  if  you  were  his  wife." 

A  quick  madness  shot  into  Esther's  brain  and  over 
whelmed  it,  anger,  or  fright,  she  could  not  tell  what.  She 
did  not  cry  out  because  she  knew  Alston  Choate  was  in  the 
next  room,  but  she  spoke  sobbingly : 

"  He  did  take  it  out  of  my  bag.  You  have  planned  it 
between  you  to  get  it  back  into  your  hands." 

Madame  Beattie  laughed  pleasantly  and  went  upstairs. 
And  Esther  crossed  the  little  hall  and  stood  in  the  dining- 
room  door  looking  at  Alston  Choate.  As  she  looked,  her 
heart  rose,  for  she  saw  conquest  easy,  in  his  bowed  head, 
his  frowning  glance.  He  had  not  wanted  to  stay,  his  at 
titude  told  her ;  he  was  even  yet  raging  against  staying. 
But  he  could  not  leave  her.  Passion  in  him  was  fighting 
side  by  side  with  feminine  implacability  in  her  against  the 
better  part  of  him.  She  went  forward  and  stood  before 
him  droopingty,  a  most  engaging  picture  of  the  purely 


336  THE  PRISONER 

feminine.  But  he  did  not  look  at  her,  and  she  had  to  throw 
what  argument  she  might  into  her  voice. 

"  You  were  so  good  to  stay,"  she  said,  with  a  little  tired 
sigh.  "  They've  gone.  Come  back  into  the  other  room." 

He  rose  heavily  and  followed  her,  but  in  the  library  he 
did  not  sit  down.  Esther  sank  into  a  low  chair,  leaned 
back  in  it  and  closed  her  eyes.  She  really  needed  to  give 
way  a  little.  Her  nerves  were  trembling  from  the  shock 
of  more  than  one  attack  on  them ;  fear,  anger,  these  were 
what  her  husband  and  Madame  Beattie  had  roused  in  her. 
Jeffrey  was  refusing  to  help  her,  and  she  hated  him.  But 
here  was  another  man  deftly  moved  to  her  proximity  by 
the  ever  careful  hand  of  providence  that  had  made  the 
creatures  for  her. 

Alston  stood  by  the  mantel,  leaning  one  elbow  on  it,  with 
a  strange  implication  of  wanting  to  put  his  head  down  and 
hide  his  face. 

"  Esther ! "  said  he.  There  was  no  pretence  now  of 
being  on  terms  too  distant  to  let  him  use  her  name. 

She  looked  up  at  him,  softly  and  appealingly,  though 
he  was  not  looking  at  her.  But  Esther,  if  she  had  played 
Othello,  would  have  blacked  herself  all  over.  Alston  be 
gan  again  in  a  voice  of  what  sounded  like  an  extreme  of 
irritation. 

"  For  God's  sake,  tell  me  about  this  thing." 

"  You  know  all  I  do,"  she  said  brokenly. 

"  I  don't  know  anything,"  said  Choate.  "  You  tell  me 
your  husband  — " 

"  Don't  call  him  that,"  she  entreated. 

"  Your  husband  entered  this  house  and  took  the  neck 
lace.  I  want  to  know  where  he  took  it  from." 

"  She  told  you,"  said  Esther  scornfully. 

Ho  gained  a  little  courage  now  and  ventured  to  look  at 
her.  If  she  could  repel  Madame  Beattie's  insinuation,  it 


THE  PRISONER  337 

must  mean  she  had  something  on  her  side.  And  when  he 
looked  he  wondered,  in  a  rush  of  pity,  how  he  could  have 
felt  anything  for  that  crushed  figure  but  ruth  and  love. 
So  when  he  spoke  again  his  voice  was  gentler,  and  Esther's 
courage  leaped  to  meet  it. 

"  I  am  told  the  necklace  was  in  your  bag.  How  did  it 
get  there?" 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Esther,  in  a  perfect  clarity. 

His  new  formed  hope  crumbled.  He  could  hear  inexor 
ably,  like  a  counter  cry,  Lydia's  voice,  saying,  "  She  stole 
it."  Had  Esther  stolen  it?  But  Esther  did  not  know 
Lydia  had  said  it,  or  that  it  had  ever  been  said  to  him  at 
all,  and  she  was  daring  more  than  she  would  have  dared 
if  she  had  known  of  that  antagonist. 

"  It  is  a  plot  between  them,"  she  said  boldly. 

"  Between  whom  ?  " 

"  Aunt  Patricia  and  him." 

"What  is  the  plot?" 

"  I  don't  know." 

"  If  you  think  there  was  a  plot,  you  must  have  made  up 
your  mind  what  the  plot  was  and  what  they  were  to  gain 
by  it.  What  do  you  believe  the  plot  to  have  been?  " 

This  was  all  very  stupid,  Esther  felt,  when  he  might 
be  assuring  her  of  his  unchanged  and  practical  devotion. 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know,"  she  said  irritably.  "  How  should 
I  know?" 

"  You  wouldn't  think  there  was  a  plot  without  hav 
ing  some  idea  of  what  it  was,"  he  was  insisting,  in  what 
she  thought  his  stupid  way.  "  What  is  your  idea  it 
was?" 

This  was  really,  she  saw,  the  same  question  over  again, 
which  was  another  instance  of  his  heavy  literalness.  She 
had  to  answer,  she  knew  now,  unless  she  was  to  dismiss  him, 
disaffected. 


338  THE  PRISONER 

"  She  put  the  necklace  in  my  bag,"  she  ventured,  with 
uncertainty  as  to  the  value  of  the  statement  and  yet  no 
diminution  of  boldness  in  making  it. 

"What  for?" 

"  To  have  him  steal  it,  I  suppose." 

66  To  have  him  steal  her  own  necklace  ?  Couldn't  she 
have  given  it  to  him  ?  " 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know,"  said  Esther.  "  She  is  half  crazy. 
Don't  you  see  she  is  ?  She  might  have  had  a  hundred  rea 
sons.  She  might  have  thought  if  he  tried  to  steal  it  he'd 
get  caught,  and  she  could  blackmail  him." 

"  But  how  was  he  to  know  she  had  put  it  in  the  bag?  " 

"  I  don't  know."  Esther  was  settling  into  the  stolidity 
of  the  obstinate  when  they  are  crowded  too  far;  yet  she 
still  remembered  she  must  not  cease  to  be  engaging. 

"  Why  was  it  better  to  have  him  find  it  in  your  bag  than 
anywhere  else  in  the  house?  "  he  was  hammering  on. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Esther  again,  and  now  she  gave  a 
little  sigh. 

That,  she  thought,  should  have  recalled  him  to  his  male 
responsibility  not  to  trap  and  torture.  But  she  had  begun 
to  wonder  how  she  could  escape  when  the  door  opened  and 
Jeff  came  in.  Alston  turned  to  meet  him,  and,  with 
Esther,  was  amazed  at  his  altered  look.  Jeff  was  like  a 
man  who  had  had  a  rage  and  got  over  it,  who  had  even 
heard  good  news,  or  had  in  some  way  been  recalled.  And 
he  had.  On  the  way  home,  when  he  had  nearly  reached 
there,  in  haste  to  find  Lydia  and  tell  her  the  necklace  was 
back  in  Madame  Beattie's  hands,  he  had  suddenly  re 
membered  that  he  was  a  prisoner  and  that  all  men  were 
prisoners  until  they  knew  they  were,  and  it  became  at  once 
imperative  to  get  back  to  Esther  and  see  if  he  could  let 
her  out.  And  the  effect  of  this  was  to  make  his  face  to 
shine  as  that  of  one  who  was  already  released  from  bond- 


THE  PRISONER 

age.  To  Esther  he  looked  young,  like  the  Jeff  she  used  to 
know. 

"  Don't  go,  Choate,"  he  said,  when  Alston  picked  him 
self  up  from  the  mantel  and  straightened,  as  if  his  next 
move  might  be  to  walk  away.  "  I  wanted  to  see  Esther, 
but  I'd  rather  see  you  both.  I've  been  thinking  about 
this  infernal  necklace,  and  I  realise  it's  of  no  value  at  all." 

Choate's  mind  leaped  at  once  to  the  jewels  in  Mau 
passant's  story,  and  Madame  Beattie's  quick  disclaimer 
when  he  ventured  to  hint  the  necklace  might  be  paste. 
Did  Jeff  know  it  was  actually  of  no  value? 

Jeff  began  to  walk  about  the  room,  expressing  himself 
eagerly  as  if  it  were  difficult  to  do  it  at  all  and  it  cer 
tainly  could  not  be  done  if  he  sat. 

**  I  mean,"  said  he,  "  the  only  value  of  anything  tangible 
is  to  help  you  get  at  something  that  isn't  tangible. 
The  necklace,  in  itself,  isn't  worth  anything.  It  glitters. 
But  if  we  were  blind  we  shouldn't  see  it  glitter." 

"  We  could  sell  it,"  said  Choate  drily,  "  or  its  owner 
could,  to  help  us  live  and  support  being  blind." 

Esther  looked  from  one  to  the  other.  Jeffrey  seemed 
to  her  quite  mad.  She  had  known  him  to  talk  in  erratic 
ways  before  he  went  into  business  and  had  no  time  to  talk, 
but  that  had  been  a  wildness  incident  to  youth.  But 
Choate  was  meeting  him  in  some  sort  of  understanding, 
and  she  decided  she  could  only  listen  attentively  and  see 
what  Choate  might  find  in  him. 

"  It's  almost  impossible  to  say  what  I  want  to,"  said 
Jeff.  The  sweat  broke  out  on  his  forehead  and  he  plunged 
his  hands  in  his  pockets  and  stood  in  an  obstinate  wrestling 
with  his  thought.  "  I  mean,  this  necklace,  as  an  object,  is 
of  no  more  importance,  really,  than  that  doorstone  out 
there.  But  the  infernal  thing  has  captured  us.  It's  made 
us  prisoner.  And  we've  got  to  free  ourselves." 


340  THE  PRISONER 

Now  Esther  was  entirely  certain  he  was  mad.  Being 
mad,  she  did  not  see  that  he  could  say  anything  she  need 
combat.  But  her  own  name  arrested  her  and  sent  the 
blood  up  into  her  face. 

"  Esther,"  said  he,  "  you're  a  prisoner  to  it  because 
you've  fallen  in  love  with  its  glitter,  and  you  think  if  you 
wore  it  you'd  be  lovelier.  So  it's  made  you  a  prisoner  to 
the  female  instinct  for  adornment." 

Alston  was  watching  him  sharply  now.  He  was  wonder 
ing  whether  Jeff  was  going  to  accuse  her  of  appropriating 
it  in  the  beginning. 

"  Choate  is  a  prisoner,"  said  Jeif  earnestly  and  with 
such  simplicity  that  even  Choate,  with  his  fastidious  hatred 
of  familiarity,  could  not  resent  it.  "  He's  a  prisoner  to 
your  charm.  But  here's  where  the  necklace  comes  in  again. 
If  he  could  find  out  you'd  done  unworthy  things  to  get 
it  your  charm  would  be  broken  and  he'd  be  free." 

This  was  so  true  that  Choate  could  only  stare  at  him 
and  wish  he  would  either  give  over  or  brutally  tell  him 
whether  he  was  to  be  free. 

"  Madame  Beattie  Uses  the  necklace  as  a  means  of  live 
lihood,"  said  Jeff.  He  was  growing  quite  happy  in  the 
way  his  mind  was  leading  him,  because  it  did  seem  to  be 
getting  him  somewhere,  where  all  the  links  would  hold. 
"  Because  she  can  get  more  out  of  it,  in  some  mysterious 
way  I  haven't  fathomed,  than  by  selling  it.  And  so  she's 
prisoner  to  it,  too." 

"  I  shall  be  able  to  tell  what  the  reason  is,"  said  Choate, 
"  before  long,  I  fancy.  I've  sent  for  the  history  of  the 
Beattie  necklace.  I  know  a  man  in  Paris  who  is  getting 
it  for  me." 

c<  Good !  "  said  Jeff.  "  Now  I  propose  we  all  escape 
from  the  necklace.  We're  prisoners,  and  let's  be  free." 

"  How  are  you  a  prisoner?  "  Alston  asked  him. 


THE  PRISONER 

Jeff  smiled  at  him. 

"  Why,"  said  he,  "  if,  as  I  told  you,  I  took  the  necklace 
from  this  house,  I'm  a  criminal,  and  the  necklace  has  laid 
me  by  the  heels.  Who's  got  it  now?  " 

This  he  asked  of  Esther  and  she  returned  bitterly: 

"  Aunt  Patricia's  got  it.  She  walked  out  of  the  room 
with  it,  shaking  it  in  the  sun." 

"  Good !  "  said  Jeff  again.  "  Let  her  have  it.  Let  her 
shake  it  in  the  sun.  But  we  three  can  escape.  Have  we 
escaped?  Choate,  have  you?" 

He  looked  at  Choate  so  seriously  that  Choate  had  to 
take  it  with  an  equal  gravity.  He  knew  how  ridiculous 
the  situation  could  be  made  by  a  word  or  two.  But  Jeff 
was  making  it  entirely  sane  and  even  epic. 

"We  know  perfectly  well,"  said  Jeff,  "that  the  law 
wouldn't  have  much  to  do  if  all  offenders  and  all  witnesses 
told  the  truth.  They  don't,  because  they're  prisoners  — 
prisoners  to  fear  and  prisoners  to  selfishness  and  hunger. 
But  if  we  three  told  each  other  the  truth  —  and  ourselves, 
too  —  we  could  be  free  this  instant.  You,  Esther,  if  you 
would  tell  Choate  here  how  you've  loved  that  necklace  and 
what  you've  done  for  it,  why,  you'd  free  him." 

Esther  cried  out  here,  a  little  sharp  cry  of  rage  against 
him. 

"  I  see,"  said  she,  "  it's  only  an  attack  on  me.  That's 
where  all  your  talk  is  leading." 

"  No,  no,"  said  Jeff  earnestly.  "  I  assure  you  it  isn't. 
But  if  you  owned  that,  Esther,  you'd  be  ashamed  to  want 
glittering  things.  And  Choate  would  get  over  wanting 
you.  And  that's  what  he'd  better  do." 

The  impudence  of  it,  Choate  knew,  was  only  equalled  by 
its  coolness.  Jeff  was  at  this  moment  believing  so  intently 
in  himself  that  he  could  have  made  anybody  —  but  an 
angry  woman  —  believe  also.  Jeff  was  telling  him  that 


342  THE  PRISONER 

he  mustn't  love  Esther,  and  virtually  also  that  this  was 
because  Esther  was  not  worthy  to  be  loved.  But  if 
Choate's  only  armor  was  silence,  Esther  had  gathered  her 
self  to  snatch  at  something  more  effectual. 

"  You  say  we're  all  prisoners  to  something,"  she  said  to 
Jeffrey.  Her  face  was  livid  now  with  anger  and  her  eyes 
glowed  upon  him.  "  How  about  you?  You  came  into 
this  house  and  took  the  necklace.  Was  that  being  a  pris 
oner  to  it?  How  about  your  being  free?  " 

Choate  turned  his  eyes  away  from  her  face  as  if  it  hurt 
him.  The  taunt  hurt  him,  too,  like  unclean  words  from 
lips  beloved.  But  he  looked  involuntarily  at  Jeff  to  see 
how  he  had  taken  them.  Jeff  stood  in  silence  looking 
gravely  at  Esther,  but  yet  as  if  he  did  not  see  her.  He 
appeared  to  be  thinking  deeply.  But  presently  he  spoke, 
and  as  if  still  from  deep  reflection. 

"  It's  true,  Esther.  I'm  a  prisoner,  too.  I'm  trying  to 
see  how  I  can  get  out." 

Choate  spoke  here,  adopting  the  terms  of  Jeff's  own 
fancy. 

"  If  you  want  us  all  to  understand  each  other,  you 
could  tell  Esther  why  you  took  the  necklace.  You  could 
tell  us  both.  We  seem  to  be  thrown  together  over  this." 

"Yes,"  said  Jeff.  "I  could.  I  must.  And  yet  I 
can't."  He  looked  up  at  Alston  with  a  smile  so  whimsical 
that  involuntarily  Alston  met  it  with  a  glimmer  of  a  smile. 
"  Choate,  it  looks  as  if  I  should  have  to  be  a  prisoner  a 
little  longer  —  perhaps  for  life." 

He  went  toward  the  door  like  a  man  bound  on  an  urgent 
errand,  and  involuntarily  Alston  turned  to  follow  him. 
The  sight  hurt  Esther  like  an  indignity.  They  had  for 
gotten  her.  Their  man's  country  called  them  to  settle 
man's  deeds,  and  the  accordance  of  their  going  lashed  her 
brain  to  quick  revolt.  It  had  been  working,  that  shrewd, 


THE  PRISONER  343 

small  brain,  through  all  their  talk,  ever  since  Madame 
Beattie  had  denied  Jeff's  having  taken  the  necklace,  and 
now  it  offered  its  result. 

"  You  didn't  take  it  at  all,"  she  called  after  them.  "  It 
was  that  girl  that's  had  the  entry  to  this  house.  It's 
Lydia  French." 


XXX 

At  the  words  Alston  turned  to  Jeff  in  an  involuntary 
questioning.  Jeff  was  inscrutable.  His  face,  as  Alston 
saw  it,  the  lines  of  the  mouth,  the  down-dropped  gaze,  was 
sad,  tender  even,  as  if  he  were  merely  sorry.  They  walked 
along  the  street  together  and  it  was  Choate  who  began 
awkwardly. 

"  Miss  Lydia  came  to  me,  some  weeks  ago,  about  these 
jewels." 

Here  Jeff  stopped  him,  breaking  in  upon  him  indeed 
when  he  had  got  thus  far. 

"  Alston,  let's  go  down  under  the  old  willow  and  smoke 
a  pipe." 

Alston  was  rather  dashed  at  having  the  tentative  intro 
duction  of  Lydia  at  once  cut  off,  and  yet  the  proposition 
seemed  to  him  natural.  Indeed,  as  they  turned  into  Mill 
Street  it  occurred  to  him  that  Jeff  might  be  providing 
solitude  and  a  fitting  place  to  talk.  As  they  went  down 
the  old  street,  unchanged  even  to  the  hollows  worn  under 
foot  in  the  course  of  the  years,  something  stole  over  them 
and  softened  imperceptibly  the  harsh  moment.  There  was 
Ma'am  Fowler's  where  they  used  to  come  to  buy  dough 
nuts.  There  was  the  house  where  the  crippled  boy  lived, 
and  sat  at  the  window  waving  signals  to  the  other  boys 
as  they  went  past.  At  the  same  window  a  man  sat  now. 
Jeff  was  pretty  sure  it  was  the  boy  grown  up,  and  yet 
was  too  absorbed  in  his  thought  of  Lydia  to  ask.  He 
didn't  really  care.  But  it  was  soothing  to  find  the  at 
mosphere  of  the  place  enveloped  him  like  a  charm.  It 

344 


THE  PRISONER  845 

wasn't  possible  they  were  so  old,  or  that  they  had  been 
mightily  excited  a  minute  before  over  a  foolish  thing. 
Presently  after  leaving  the  houses  they  turned  off  the  road 
and  crossed  the  shelving  sward  to  the  old  willow,  and  there 
on  a  bench  hacked  by  their  own  jackknives  they  sat  down 
to  smoke.  Jeff  remembered  it  was  he  who  had  thought  to 
give  the  bench  a  back.  He  had  nailed  the  board  from  tree 
to  tree.  It  was  here  now  or  its  fellow  —  he  liked  to  think 
it  was  his  own  board  —  and  he  leaned  against  it  and 
lighted  up.  The  day's  perturbation  had  taken  Choate  in 
another  way.  He  didn't  want  to  smoke.  But  he  rolled  a 
cigarette  with  care  and  pretended  to  take  much  interest 
in  it.  He  felt  it  was  for  Jeff  to  begin.  Jeff  sat  silent  a 
while,  his  eyes  upon  the  field  across  the  flats  where  the  boys 
were  playing  ball.  Yet  in  the  end  he  did  begin. 

"  That  necklace,  Choate,"  said  he,  "  is  a  regular  little 
devil  of  a  necklace.  Do  you  realise  how  much  mischief  it's 
already  done  ?  " 

Between  Esther's  asseverations  and  Lydia's  theories 
Choate's  mind  was  in  a  good  deal  of  a  fog.  He  thought 
it  best  to  give  a  perfunctory  grunt  and  hope  Jeff  would 
go  on. 

"  And  after  all,"  said  Jeff,  "  as  I  said,  the  devilish 
thing  isn't  of  the  slightest  real  value  in  itself.  It  can,  in 
an  indirect  way,  send  a  fellow  to  prison.  It  can  excite 
an  amount  of  longing  in  a  woman's  mind  colossal  enough 
to  make  one  of  the  biggest  motives  possible  for  any  sort  of 
crime.  Because  it  glitters,  simply  because  it  glitters.  It 
can  cause  another  woman  who  has  done  caring  for  glitter, 
to  depend  on  it  for  a  living." 

"  You  mean  Madame  Beattie,"  said  Alston.  "  If  it's 
her  necklace  and  she  can  sell  it,  why  doesn't  she  do  it? 
Royal  personages  don't  account  for  that." 

But  Jeff  went  on  with  his  ruminating. 


346  THE  PRISONER 

"  Alston,"  said  he,  "  did  it  ever  occur  to  you  that,  with 
the  secrets  of  nature  laid  open  before  us  as  they  are  now 
—  even  though  the  page  isn't  even  half  turned  —  does  it 
occur  to  you  we  needn't  be  at  the  mercy  of  sex?  Any  of 
us,  I  mean,  men  and  women  both.  Have  we  got  to  get 
drunk  when  it  assaults  us?  Have  we  got  to  be  the  cave 
man  and  carry  off  the  woman?  And  lie  to  ourselves 
throughout  ?  Have  we  got  to  say,  *  I  covet  this  woman 
because  she  is  all  beauty  '  ?  Can't  we  keep  the  lookout  up 
in  the  cockloft  and  let  him  judge,  and  if  he  says,  'That 
isn't  beauty,  old  man  '  —  believe  him?  " 

"  But  sometimes,"  said  Alston,  "  it  is  beauty." 

He  knew  what  road  Jeff  was  on.  Jeff  was  speaking  out 
his  plain  thought  and  at  the  same  time  assuring  them  both 
that  they  needn't,  either  of  them,  be  submerged  by  Esther, 
because  real  beauty  wasn't  in  her.  If  they  ate  the  fruit 
of  her  witchery  it  would  be  to  their  own  damnation,  and 
they  would  deserve  what  they  got. 

"  Yes,"  said  Jeff,  "  sometimes  it  is  real  beauty.  But 
even  then  the  thing  that  grows  out  of  sex  madness  is  better 
than  the  madness  itself.  Sometimes  I  think  the  only 
time  some  fellows  feel  alive  is  when  they're  in  love.  That's 
what's  given  us  such  an  idea  of  it.  But  when  I  think 
of  a  man  and  woman  planking  along  together  through  the 
dust  and  mud  —  good  comrades,  you  know  —  that's  the 
best  of  it." 

"Of  course,"  said  Alston  stiffly,  "that's  the  point. 
That's  what  it  leads  to." 

"  Ah,  but  with  some  of  them,  you'd  never  get  there ; 
they're  not  made  for  wives  —  or  sisters  —  or  mothers. 
And  no  man,  if  he  saw  what  he  was  going  into,  would 
dance  their  dance.  He  wouldn't  choose  it,  that  is,  when 
he  thinks  back  to  it." 

Alston  took   out  his  match-box,   and   felt  his   fingers 


THE  PRISONER  347 

quiver  on  it.  He  was  enraged  with  himself  for  minding. 
This  was  the  warning  then.  He  was  told,  almost  in  exact 
words,  not  to  covet  his  neighbour's  wife,  cautioned  like  a 
boy  not  to  snatch  at  forbidden  fruit,  and  even,  unthink- 
ably,  that  the  fruit  was,  besides  not  being  his,  rotten. 
And  at  his  heart  he  knew  the  warning  was  fair  and  true. 
Esther  had  dealt  a  blow  to  his  fastidious  idealities.  Her 
deceit  had  slain  something.  She  had  not  so  much  be 
trayed  it  to  him  by  facts,  for  facts  he  could,  if  passion 
were  strong  enough,  put  aside.  But  his  inner  heart  search 
ing  for  her  heart,  like  a  hand  seeking  a  beloved  hand,  had 
found  an  emptiness.  He  was  so  bruised  now  that  he 
wanted  to  hit  out  and  hurt  Jeff,  perhaps,  at  least  force 
him  to  naked  warfare. 

"  You  want  me  to  believe,"  he  said,  "  that  —  Esther  —  " 
he  stumbled  over  the  word,  but  at  such  a  pass  he  would  not 
speak  of  her  more  decorously  —  "  years  ago  took  Madame 
Beattie's  necklace." 

Jeff  was  watching  the  boys  across  the  flats,  critically 
and  with  a  real  interest. 

"  She  did,"  he  said. 

Alston  bolstered  himself  with  a  fictitious  anger. 

"  And  you  can  tell  me  of  it,"  he  blustered. 

"You  asked  me." 

"You  believe  she  did?" 

"  It's  true,"  said  Jeff,  with  the  utmost  quietness.  "  I 
never  have  said  it  before.  Not  to  my  father  even.  But 
he  knows.  He  did  naturally,  in  the  flurry  of  that  time." 

''  Yet  you  tell  me  because  I  ask  you." 

Alston  seemed  to  be  bitterly  defending  Esther. 

"  Not  precisely,"  said  Jeff.  "  Because  you're  bewitched 
by  her.  You  must  get  over  that." 

The  distance  wavered  before  Choate's  eyes,  He  hated 
Jeffrey  childishly  because  he  could  be  so  calm. 


348  THE  PRISONER 

"  You  needn't  worry,"  he  said.  "  She  is  as  completely 
separated  from  me  as  if  —  as  if  you  had  never  been  away 
from  her." 

"  That's  it,"  said  Jeff.  "  You  can't  marry  her  unless 
she's  divorced  from  me.  She's  welcome  to  that  —  the  di 
vorce,  I  mean.  But  you  can't  go  drivelling  on  having 
frenzies  over  her.  Good  God,  Choate,  don't  you  see  what 
you're  doing?  You're  wasting  yourself.  Shake  it  off. 
You  don't  want  Esther.  She's  shocked  you  out  of  your 
boots  already.  And  she  doesn't  know  there's  anything  to 
be  shocked  at.  You're  Addington  to  the  bone,  and 
Esther's  a  primitive  squaw.  You've  nothing  whatever  to 
do  with  one  another,  you  two.  It's  absurd." 

Choate  sat  looking  at  the  landscape  which  no  longer 
wavered.  The  boys  ran  fairly  straight  now.  Suddenly 
he  began  to  laugh.  He  laughed  gaspingly,  hysterically, 
and  Jeff  regarded  him  from  time  to  time  tolerantly  and 
smoked. 

"  I  know  what  you're  thinking,"  he  said,  when  Alston 
stopped,  with  a  last  splutter,  and  wiped  his  eyes.  "  You're 
thinking,  between  us  we've  broken  all  the  codes.  I  have 
vilified  my  wife.  I've  warned  you  against  her  and  you 
haven't  resented  it.  It  shows  the  value  of  extreme  com 
mon-sense  in  affairs  of  the  heart.  It  shows  also  that  I 
haven't  an  illusion  left  about  Esther,  and  that  you  haven't 
either.  And  if  we  say  another  word  about  it  we  shall 
have  to  get  up  and  fight,  to  save  our  self-respect." 

So  Alston  did  now  light  his  cigarette  and  they  went  on 
smoking.  They  talked  about  the  boys  at  their  game  and 
only  when  the  players  came  down  to  the  scow,  presumably 
to  push  over  and  buy  doughnuts  of  Ma'am  Fowler,  did 
they  get  up  to  go.  As  they  turned  away  from  the  scene 
of  boyish  intimacies,  involuntarily  they  stiffened  into  an 
other  manner ;  there  was  even  some  implication  of  mutual 


THE  PRISONER  349 

dislike  in  it,  of  guardedness,  one  against  the  other.  But 
when  they  parted  at  the  corner  of  the  street  Alston,  out 
of  his  perplexity,  ventured  a  question. 

"  I  should  be  very  glad  to  be  told  if,  as  you  say,  you 
took  the  necklace  out  of  Esther's  bag,  why  you  took  it." 

66  Sorry,"  said  Jeff.  "  You  deserve  to  be  told  the  whole 
business.  But  you  can't  be." 

So  he  went  home,  knowing  he  was  going  to  an  inquiring 
Lydia.  And  how  would  an  exalted  common-sense  work 
if  presented  to  Lydia?  He  thought  of  it  all  the  way. 
How  would  it  do  if,  in  these  big  crises  of  the  heart,  men 
and  women  actually  told  each  other  what  they  thought? 
It  was  not  the  way  of  nature  as  she  stood  by  their  side 
prompting  them  to  their  most  picturesque  attitude,  that 
her  work  might  be  accomplished,  saying  to  the  man, 
"  Prove  yourself  a  devil  of  a  fellow  because  the  girl  desires 
a  hero,"  and  to  the  girl,  "  Be  modesty  and  gentleness 
ineffable  because  that  is  the  complexion  a  hero  loves." 
And  the  man  actually  believes  he  is  a  hero  and  the  girl 
doesn't  know  she  is  hiding  herself  behind  a  veil  too  dazzling 
to  let  him  see  her  as  she  is.  How  would  it  be  if  they  out 
witted  nature  at  her  little  game  and  gave  each  other  the 
fealty  of  blood  brothers,  the  interchange  of  the  true  word  ? 

Lydia  came  to  the  supper  table  with  the  rest.  She  was 
rather  quiet  and  absorbed  and  not  especially  alive  to  Jeff's 
coming  in.  No  quick  glance  questioned  him  about  the 
state  of  things  as  he  had  left  them.  But  after  supper  she 
lingered  behind  the  others  and  asked  him  directly : 

"  Couldn't  we  go  out  somewhere  and  talk?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  he.     "  We  could  walk  down  to  the  river." 

They  started  at  once,  and  Anne,  seeing  them  go,  sighed 
deeply.  Lydia  was  shut  away  from  her  lately.  Anne 
missed  her. 

Lydia  and  Jeff  went  down  the  narrow  path  at  the  back 


350  THE  PRISONER 

of  the  house,  a  path  that  had  never,  so  persistent  was 
it,  got  quite  grown  over  in  the  years  when  the  maiden 
ladies  lived  here.  Perhaps  boys  had  kept  it  alive,  run 
ning  that  way.  At  the  foot  and  on  the  river  bank  were 
bushes,  alder  and  a  wilderness  of  small  trees  bound  by  wild 
grape-vines  into  a  wall.  Through  these  Lydia  led  the 
way  to  the  fallen  birch  by  the  waterside.  She  turned  and 
faced  Jeffrey  in  the  gathering  dusk.  He  fancied  her  face 
looked  paler  than  it  should. 

"  Does  she  know  it?  "  asked  Lydia. 

"Who?" 

"  Esther.     Does  she  know  I  stole  it  out  of  the  bag?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Jeff.  Suddenly  he  determined  to  tell  the 
truth  to  Lydia.  She  looked  worthy  of  it.  He  wouldn't 
save  her  pain  that  belonged  to  the  tangle  where  they 
groped.  He  and  she  would  share  the  pain  together. 
"  She  guessed  it.  Nobody  told  her  she  was  right." 

"  Then,"  said  Lydia,  "  I  must  go  away." 

"Go  away?" 

"  To  save  Farvie  and  Anne.  They  mustn't  know  it. 
I  wanted  to  go  this  afternoon,  just  as  soon  as  you  took 
the  necklace  away  from  me  and  I  realised  what  people 
would  say.  But  I  knew  that  would  be  silly.  People  can't 
run  away  and  leave  notes  behind.  But  I  can  tell  Anne 
I  want  to  go  to  New  York  and  get  pupils.  And  I  could 
get  them.  I  can  do  housework,  too." 

She  was  an  absolutely  composed  Lydia.  She  had  fore 
stalled  him  in  her  colossal  common-sense. 

"  But,  Lydia,"  said  he,  "  you  don't  need  to.  Madame 
Beattie  has  her  necklace.  I  gave  it  back  into  her  hand. 
I  daresay  the  old  harpy  will  want  hush  money,  but  that's 
not  your  business.  It's  mine.  I  can't  give  her  any  if 
I  would,  and  she  knows  it.  She'll  simply  light  here  like 
a  bird  of  prey  for  a  while  and  harry  me  for  money  to 


THE  PRISONER  351 

shield  Esther,  to  shield  you,  and  when  she  finds  she  can't 
get  it  she'll  sail  peacefully  off." 

"  Madame  Beattie  wouldn't  do  anything  hateful  to  me," 
said  Lydia. 

"  Oh,  yes,  she  would,  if  she  could  get  an  income  out  of  it. 
She  wouldn't  mean  to  be  hateful.  That  night-hawk  isn't 
hateful  when  it  spears  a  mole." 

66  Do  you  mean,"  said  Lydia,  "  that  just  because 
Madame  Beattie  has  her  necklace  back,  they  couldn't  ar 
rest  me?  Because  if  they  could  I've  certainly  got  to  go 
away.  I  can't  kill  Farvie  and  Anne." 

"  Nobody  will  arrest  anybody,"  said  Jeff.  "  You  are 
absolutely  out  of  it.  And  you  must  keep  your  mouth 
tight  and  stay  out." 

"  But  you  said  Esther  knew  I  did  it." 

"  She  guessed.  Let  her  keep  on  guessing.  Let  Madame 
Beattie  keep  on.  I  have  told  them  I  did  it  and  I  shall 
keep  on  telling  them  so." 

Lydia  turned  upon  him. 

"  You  told  them  that?  Oh,  I  can't  have  it.  I  won't. 
I  shall  go  to  them  at  once." 

She  had  even  turned  to  fly  to  them. 

"  No,"  said  Jeff.  "  Stay  here,  Lydia.  That  damnable 
necklace  has  made  trouble  enough.  It  goes  slipping 
through  our  lives  like  a  detestable  snake,  and  now  it's 
stopped  with  its  original  owner,  I  propose  it  shall  stay 
stopped.  It's  like  a  property  in  a  play.  It  goes  about 
from  hand  to  hand  to  hand,  to  bring  out  something  in  the 
play.  And  after  all  the  play  isn't  about  the  necklace. 
It's  about  us  —  us  —  you  and  Esther  and  Choate  and 
Madame  Beattie  and  me.  It's  betraying  us  to  ourselves. 
If  it  hadn't  been  for  the  necklace  in  the  first  place  and 
Esther's  coveting  it,  I  might  have  been  a  greasy  citizen 
of  Addington  instead  of  a  queer  half  labourer  and  half 


352  THE  PRISONER 

loafer;  my  father  wouldn't  have  lost  his  nerve,  Choate 
wouldn't  have  been  in  love  with  Esther,  and  you  wouldn't 
have  been  doing  divine  childish  things  to  bail  me  out  of 
my  destiny." 

Lydia  selected  from  this  the  fact  that  hit  her  hardest. 

"Is  Alston  Choate  in  love  with  Esther?" 

"He  thinks  he  is." 

"  Then  I  must  tell  Anne." 

"  For  God's  sake,  no !  Lydia,  I'm  talking  to  you  down 
here  in  the  dusk  as  if  you  were  the  sky  or  that  star  up 
there.  The  star  doesn't  tell." 

"  But  Anne  worships  him." 

"  Do  you  mean  she's  in  love  with  Choate?  " 

"  No,"  said  Lydia,  "  I  don't  mean  that.  I  mean  she 
thinks  he's  the  most  beautiful  person  she  ever  saw." 

"  Then  let  her  keep  on  thinking  so,"  said  Jeff.  "  And 
sometime  he'll  think  that  of  her." 

Lydia  wras  indignant. 

"  If  you  think  Anne  —  "  she  began,  and  he  stopped  her. 

"  No,  no.  Anne  is  a  young  angel.  Only  a  feeling  of 
that  kind  —  Lydia,  I  am  furious  because  I  can't  talk  to 
you  as  I  want  to." 

«  Why  can't  you?  "  asked  Lydia. 

"  Because  it  isn't  possible,  between  men  and  women. 
Unless  they've  got  a  right  to.  Unless  they  can  throw 
even  their  shams  and  vanities  away,  and  live  in  each 
other's  minds.  I  am  married  to  Esther.  If  I  tell  you  I 
won't  ask  you  into  my  mind  because  I  am  married  to  her 
you'll  think  I  am  a  hero.  And  if  I  do  ask  you  in,  you'll 
come  —  for  you  are  very  brave  —  and  you'll  see  things 
I  don't  want  you  to  see." 

"  You  mean,"  said  Lydia,  "  see  that  you  know  I  am  in 
love  with  you.  Well,  I'm  not,  Jeff,  not  in  the  way  people 
talk  about.  Not  that  way," 


THE  PRISONER  353 

His  quick  sense  of  her  meanings  supplied  what  she  did 
not  say:  not  Esther's  way.  She  scorned  that,  with  a 
youthful  scorn,  the  feline  domination  of  Esther.  If  that 
was  being  in  love  she  would  have  none  of  it.  But  Jeff 
was  not  actually  thinking  of  her.  He  was  listening  to 
some  voice  inside  himself,  an  interrogatory  voice,  an  ir 
responsible  one,  not  warning  him  but  telling  him : 

"  You  do  care.  You  care  about  Lydia.  That's  what 
you're  facing  —  love  —  love  of  Lydia." 

It  was  disconcerting.  It  was  the  last  thing  for  a  man 
held  by  the  leg  in  several  ways  to  contemplate.  And  yet 
there  it  was.  He  had  entered  again  into  youth  and  was 
rushing  along  on  the  river  that  buoys  up  even  a  leaf  for  a 
time  and  feels  so  strong  against  the  leaf's  frail  texture  that 
every  voyaging  fibre  trusts  it  joyously.  The  summer  air 
felt  sweet  to  him.  There  were  wild  perfumes  in  it  and  the 
smell  of  water  and  of  earth. 

"  Lydia !  "  he  said,  and  again  he  spoke  her  name. 

"  Yes,"  said  Lydia.     "  What  is  it?  " 

She  stood  there  apart  from  him,  a  slim  thing,  her  white 
scarf  held  tight,  actually,  to  his  quickened  sense,  as  if  she 
kept  the  veil  of  her  virginity  wrapped  about  her  sternly. 
For  the  moment  he  did  not  feel  the  despair  of  his  greater 
age,  of  his  tawdry  past  or  his  fettered  present.  He  was 
young  and  the  night  air  was  as  innocently  sweet  to  him 
as  if  he  had  never  loved  a  woman  and  been  repulsed  by 
her  and  dwelt  for  years  in  the  anguish  of  his  own  recoil. 

"  Lydia,"  he  said,  "  what  if  you  and  I  should  tell  each 
other  the  truth?" 

"  We  do,"  said  Lydia  simply.  "  I  tell  you  the  truth 
anyway.  And  you  could  me.  But  you  don't  understand 
me  quite.  You  think  I'd  die  for  you.  Yes,  I  would.  But 
I  shouldn't  think  twice  about  wanting  to  be  happier  with 
you.  I'm  happy  enough  now." 


354  THE  PRISONER 

A  thousand  thoughts  rushed  to  his  lips,  to  tell  her  she 
did  not  know  how  happy  they  could  be.  But  he  held  them 
back.  All  the  sweet  intimacies  of  life  ran  before  him,  life 
here  in  Addington,  secure,  based  on  old  traditions,  if  she 
were  his  wife  and  they  had  so  much  happiness  they  could 
afford  to  be  careless  about  it  as  other  married  folk  were 
careless.  There  might  not  be  daily  banquets  of  delight, 
but  cool  fruits,  the  morning  and  the  evening,  the  still 
course  of  being  that  seemed  to  him  now,  after  his  seething 
first  youth,  the  actual  paradise.  But  Lydia  was  going  on, 
an  erect  slim  figure  in  her  enfolding  scarf. 

"  And  you  mustn't  be  sorry  I  stole  the  necklace  —  ex 
cept  for  Anne  and  Farvie,  if  she  does  anything  to  me." 
"  She  "  was  always  Esther,  he  had  learned.  "  I'm  glad, 
because  it  makes  us  both  alike." 

"You  and  me?" 

"  Yes.  You  took  something  that  makes  you  call  your 
self  a  thief.  Now  I'm  a  thief.  We're  just  alike.  You 
said,  when  you  first  came  home,  doing  a  thing  like  that, 
breaking  law,  makes  you  feel  outside." 

"  It  isn't  only  feeling  outside,"  he  made  haste  to  tell 
her.  "  You  are  outside.  You're  outside  the  social  cove 
nant  men  have  made.  It's  a  good  righteous  covenant, 
Lydia.  It  w7as  come  to  through  blood  and  misery.  It's 
pretty  bad  to  be  outside." 

"  Well,"  said  Lydia,  "  I'm  outside  anyway.  With  you. 
And  I'm  glad  of  it.  You  won't  feel  so  lonesome  now." 

Jeff's  eyes  began  to  brim. 

"  You  little  hateful  thing,"  he  said.  "  You've  made  me 
cry." 

"Got  a  hanky?"  Lydia  inquired  solicitously. 

"  Yes.  Besides,  it  isn't  a  hanky  cry,  unless  you  make 
it  worse.  Lydia,  I  wish  you  and  Anne  would  go  away  and 
let  father  and  me  muddle  along  alone." 


THE  PRISONER  355 

"Do  you,"  said  Lydia  joyously.  "  Then  you  do  like 
me.  You  like  me  awfully.  You  think  you'll  tell  me  so 
if  I  stay  round." 

"Do  I,  you  little  prying  thing?"  He  thought  he 
could  establish  some  ground  of  understanding  between  them 
if  he  abused  her.  "You're  a  good  little  sister,  Lydia, 
but  you're  a  terrifying  one." 

"  No,"  said  Lydia.  "  I'm  not  a  sister."  She  let  the 
enfolding  scarf  go  and  the  breeze  took  its  ends  and  made 
them  ripple.  "  Anne's  a  sister.  She  likes  you  almost  as 
well  as  she  does  Farvie.  But  she  does  like  Farvie  best.  I 
don't  like  Farvie  best.  I  like  you  best  of  all  the  world. 
And  I  love  to.  I'm  determined  to.  You  ought  to  be  liked 
over  and  over,  because  you've  had  so  much  taken  away 
from  you.  Why,  that's  what  I'm  for,  Jeff.  That's  what 
I  was  born  for.  Just  to  like  you." 

He  took  a  step  toward  her,  and  the  rippling  scarf  seemed 
to  beckon  him  on.  Lydia  stepped  back.  "  But  if  you 
touched  me,  Jeff,"  she  said,  "  if  you  kissed  me,  I'd  kill  you. 
I'm  glad  you  did  it  once  when  you  didn't  think.  But  if 
we  did  it  once  more  —  " 

She  stopped  and  he  heard  her  breath  and  then  the  click 
of  her  teeth  as  if  she  broke  the  words  in  two. 

"  Don't  be  afraid,  Lydia,"  he  said.     "  I  won't." 

"  I'm  not  afraid,"  she  flashed. 

"  And  don't  talk  of  killing." 

"You  thought  I'd  kill  myself.  No.  What  would  it 
matter  about  me?  If  I  could  make  you  a  little  happier 
—  not  so  lonesome  —  why,  you  might  kiss  me.  All  day 
long.  But  you'd  care  afterward.  You'd  say  you  were 
outside."  There  wras  an  exquisite  pity  in  the  words.  She 
was  older  than  he  in  her  passion  for  him,  stronger  in  her 
mastery  of  it,  and  she  loved  him  overwhelmingly  and 
knew  she  loved  him.  "  Now  you  see,"  said  Lydia  quietly. 


356  THE  PRISONER 

"  You  know  the  whole.  You  can  call  me  your  sister,  if 
you  want  to.  I  don't  care  what  you  call  me.  I  suppose 
some  sisters  like  their  brothers  more  than  anybody  else  in 
the  world.  But  not  as  I  like  you.  Nobody  ever  liked  any 
body  as  I  like  you.  And  when  you  put  your  arms  down 
on  the  table  and  lay  your  head  on  them,  you  can  think  of 
that." 

"  How  do  you  know  I  put  my  head  on  the  table  ?  " 
said  Jeff.  It  was  wholesome  to  him  to  sound  rough  to 
her. 

"  Why,  of  course  you  do,"  she  said.  "  You  did,  one  of 
those  first  days.  I  wish  you  didn't.  It  makes  me  want 
to  run  out  doors  and  scream  because  I  can't  come  in  and 
6  poor  '  your  hair." 

"  I  won't  do  it  again,"  said  Jeff.  "  Lydia,  I  can't  say 
one  of  the  things  I  want  to.  Not  one  of  them." 

"  I  don't  expect  you  to,"  said  Lydia.  "  I  understand 
you  and  me  too.  All  I  wanted  was  for  you  to  under 
stand  me." 

"  I  do,"  said  Jeff.  "  And  I'll  stand  up  to  it.  Shake 
hands,  Lydia." 

"No,"  said  Lydia,  "I  don't  want  to  shake  hands." 
She  folded  the  scarf  again  about  her,  tighter,  it  seemed, 
than  it  was  before.  "  You  and  I  don't  need  signs  and  cere 
monies.  Now  I'm  going  back  and  read  to  Farvie.  You 
go  to  walk,  Jeff.  Walk  a  mile.  Walk  a  dozen  miles. 
If  we  had  horses  we'd  get  on  'em  bareback  and  ride  and 
ride." 

Jeff  stood  and  watched  her  while  he  could  see  the  white 
scarf  through  the  dusk.  Then  he  turned  to  go  along  the 
river  path,  but  he  stopped.  He,  too,  thought  of  galloping 
horses,  devouring  distance  with  her  beside  him  through  the 
night.  He  began  to  strip  off  his  clothes  and  Lydia,  on 
the  rise,  heard  his  splash  in  the  river.  She  laughed,  a  wild 


THE  PRISONER  357 

little  laugh.  She  was  glad  he  was  conquering  space  in 
some  way,  his  muscles  taut  and  rejoicing.  Lydia  had  at 
tained  woman's  lot  at  a  bound.  All  she  wanted  was  for 
him  to  have  the  full  glories  of  a  man. 


XXXI 

Alston  Choate  went  home  much  later  consciously  to  his 
mother,  and  she  comforted  him  though  he  could  not  tell 
her  why  he  needed  it.  She  and  Mary  were  sitting  on  the 
back  veranda,  looking  across  the  slope  of  the  river,  doing 
nothing,  because  it  was  dus£,  and  dropping  a  word  here 
and  there  about  the  summer  air  and  the  night.  Alston 
put  down  his  hat  and,  as  he  sat,  pushed  up  his  hair  with 
the  worried  gesture  both  women  knew.  Mary  at  once  went 
in  to  get  him  a  cool  drink,  her  never-failing  service,  and 
his  mother  turned  an  instant  toward  him  expectantly  and 
then  away  again.  He  caught  the  movement.  He  knew 
she  was  leaving  him  alone. 

"  Mother,"  he  said,  "  you  never  were  disgusted  through 
and  through.  With  yourself." 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  she.  "  It's  more  or  less  my  normal 
state.  I'm  disgusted  because  I  haven't  courage.  If  I'd 
had  courage,  I  should  have  escaped  all  the  things  that 
make  me  bad  company  for  myself  now." 

Alston,  in  his  quickened  mood,  wondered  what  it  was 
she  had  wanted  to  escape.  Was  it  Addington?  Was  it 
his  father  even,  a  courteous  Addington  man  much  like 
what  Alston  was  afraid  he  might  be  in  the  end,  when  he 
was  elderly  and  pottered  down  town  with  a  cane?  He 
hated  to  be  what  he  was  afraid  he  inevitably  must.  It 
came  upon  him  with  renewed  impetus,  now  that  he  had 
left  Esther  with  a  faint  disgust  at  her,  and  only  a 
wearied  acquiescence  in  the  memory  that  she  had  once 
charmed  him.  He  wished  he  were  less  fastidious  even. 

358 


THE  PRISONER  359 

How  much  more  of  a  man  he  should  have  felt  if  he  had 
clung  to  his  passion  for  her  and  answered  Jeffrey  with 
the  oath  or  blow  that  more  elemental  men  found  fitting  in 
their  rivalry. 

"  Mother,"  said  he,  "  does  civilisation  rot  us  after  all? 
Have  we  got  to  be  savages  to  find  out  what's  in  us?  " 

"  Something  seems  to  rot  us  round  the  edges,"  said  the 
mother.  "  But  that's  because  there  don't  appear  to  be 
any  big  calls  while  we're  so  comfortable.  You  can't  get 
up  in  the  midst  of  dinner  and  give  a  war-cry  to  prove  you're 
a  big  chief.  It  would  be  silly.  You'd  be  surprised,  dear, 
to  know  how  I  go  seething  along  and  can't  find  anything 
to  burn  up  —  anything  that  ought  to  be  burned.  Some 
times  when  Mary  and  I  sit  crocheting  together  I  wonder 
whether  she  won't  smell  a  scorch." 

He  thought  of  the  night  when  she  had  lain  in  bed  and 
told  how  she  was  travelling  miles  from  Addington  in  her 
novel. 

"  You  never  owned  these  things  before,  mother,"  he 
said.  "  What  makes  you  now?  " 

"  That  I'm  a  buccaneer?  Maybe  because  you've  got  to 
the  same  point  yourself.  You  half  hate  our  little  piffling 
customs,  and  yet  they've  bound  you  hand  and  foot  because 
they're  what  you're  used  to.  And  they're  the  very  devil, 
Alston,  unless  you're  strong  enough  to  fight  against  'em 
and  live  laborious  days." 

"  What's  the  matter  with  us?     Is  it  Addington?  " 

"  Good  old  Addington !  Not  Addington,  any  more  than 
the  world.  It's  grown  too  fat  and  selfish.  Pretty  soon 
somebody's  going  to  upset  the  balance  and  then  we  shall 
fight  and  the  stern  virtues  will  come  back." 

"  You  old  Tartar,"  said  Alston,  "  have  we  really  got  to 
fight?" 

"We've  got  to  be  punished  anyhow,"  said  his  mother. 


360  THE  PRISONER 

"  And  I  suppose  the  only  punishment  we  should  feel  is 
the  punishment  of  money  and  blood." 

"  Let's  run  away,  mother,"  said  Alston.  "  Let's  pick 
up  Mary  and  run  away  to  Europe." 

"  Oh,  no,"  said  she.  "  They're  going  to  fight  harder 
than  we  are.  Don't  you  see  there's  an  ogre  over  there 
grinning  at  them  and  sharpening  his  claws?  They've  got 
to  fight  Germany." 

"  England  can  manage  Germany,"  said  Alston, 
"  through  the  pocket.  Industrial  wars  are  the  only  ones 
we  shall  ever  see." 

"  If  you  can  bank  on  that  you're  not  so  clever  as  I  am," 
said  his  mother.  "  I  see  the  cloud  rising.  Every  morn 
ing  it  lies  there  thick  along  the  east.  There's  going  to 
be  war,  and  whether  we're  righteous  enough  to  stand  up 
against  the  ogre,  God  knows." 

Alston  was  impressed,  in  spite  of  himself.  His  mother 
was  not  given  to  prophecy  or  passionate  asseveration. 

"  But  anyhow,"  said  she,  "  you  can't  run  away,  for 
they're  going  to  ask  you  to  stand  for  mayor." 

"  The  dickens  they  are !     Who  said  so  ?  " 

"  Amabel.  She  was  in  here  this  afternoon,  as  guileless 
as  a  child.  Weedon  Moore  told  her  they  were  going  to 
ask  you  to  stand  and  she  hoped  you  wouldn't." 

"Why?" 

"  Because  Moore's  the  rival  candidate,  and  she  thinks  he 
has  an  influence  with  the  working-man.  She  thinks  the 
general  cause  of  humanity  would  be  better  served  by 
Moore.  That's  Amabel." 

"  She  needn't  worry,"  said  Alston,  getting  up.  "  I 
shouldn't  take  it." 

"  Alston,"  said  his  mother,  "  there's  your  chance.  Go 
out  into  the  rough-and-tumble.  Get  on  a  soap  box.  Tell 
the  working-man  something  that  will  make  him  think  you 


THE  PRISONER  361 

haven't  lived  in  a  library  all  your  life.  It  may  not  do  him 
any  good,  but  it'll  save  your  soul  alive." 

She  had  at  last  surprised  him.  He  was  used  to  her 
well-bred  acquiescence  in  his  well-bred  actions.  She  knew 
he  invited  only  the  choice  between  two  equally  irreproach 
able  goods:  not  between  the  good  and  evil.  Alston  had 
a  vague  uncomfortable  besetment  that  his  mother  would 
have  had  a  warmer  hope  for  him  if  he  had  been  tempted 
of  demons,  tortured  by  doubts.  Then  she  would  have 
bade  him  take  refuge  on  heights,  even  have  dragged  him 
there.  But  she  knew  he  was  living  serenely  on  a  plain. 
Alston  thought  there  ought  to  be  some  sympathy  accorded 
men  who  liked  living  on  a  plain. 

"  Good  Lord ! "  said  he,  looking  down  at  her  and  liking 
her  better  with  every  word  she  said.  "  You  scare  me  out 
of  my  boots.  You're  a  firebrand  on  a  mountain." 

"  No,"  said  his  mother.  "  I'm  a  decent  Addington  ma 
tron  with  not  a  hundredth  part  of  a  chance  of  jolting  the 
earth  unless  you  do  it  for  me.  I  can't  jolt  for  myself 
because  I'm  an  anti.  There's  Mary.  Hear  the  ice  clink. 
I'll  draw  in  my  horns.  Mary'd  take  my  temperature." 

Alston  stayed  soberly  at  home  and  read  a  book  that 
evening,  his  nerves  on  edge,  listening  for  a  telephone  call. 
It  did  not  come,  but  still  he  knew  Esther  was  willing  him 
to  her. 

Esther  sat  by  the  window  downstairs,  in  the  dusk,  in  a 
fever  of  desire  to  know  what,  since  the  afternoon,  he  was 
thinking  of  her,  and  for  the  first  time  there  was  a  little 
fleering  doubt  in  her  heart  whether  she  could  make  him 
think  something  else.  As  to  Alston,  she  had  the  hesita 
tions  of  an  imperfect  understanding.  There  were  cham 
bers  where  he  habitually  dwelt,  and  these  she  never  entered 
at  all.  His  senses  were  keenly  yet  fastidiously  alive. 
They  could  never  be  approached  save  through  shaded  ave- 


362  THE  PRISONER 

nues  she  found  it  dull  to  traverse,  and  where  she  never 
really  kept  her  way  without  great  circumspection.  The 
passion  of  men  was,  in  her  eyes,  something  practically 
valuable.  She  did  not  go  out  to  meet  it  through  an  over 
whelming  impetus  of  her  own.  It  was  a  way  of  controlling 
them,  of  buying  what  they  had  to  give:  comforts  and 
pretty  luxuries.  She  would  have  liked  to  live  like  an 
adored  child,  all  her  whims  supplied,  all  her  vanities  fed. 
And  here  in  this  little  circle  of  Addington  Alston  Choate 
was  the  one  creature  who  could  lift  her  out  of  her  barren 
life  and  give  her  ease  at  every  point  with  the  recognition 
of  the  most  captious  world. 

And  she  was  willing  him.  As  the  evening  wore  on,  she 
found  she  was  breathing  hard  and  her  wrists  were  beating 
with  loathing  of  her  own  situation  and  hatred  of  those  who 
had  made  it  for  her,  if  she  could  allow  herself  to  think 
she  hated.  For  Esther  had  still  to  preserve  the  certainty 
that  she  was  good.  Madame  Beattie,  up  there  with  her 
night-light  and  her  book,  she  knew  she  hated.  Of  Jeff 
she  did  not  dare  to  think,  he  made  her  wrists  beat  so,  and  of 
Alston  Choate  she  knew  it  was  deliberately  cruel  of  him 
not  to  come.  And  then  as  if  her  need  of  something  kind 
and  unquestioning  had  summoned  him,  a  step  fell  on  the 
walk,  and  she  saw  Reardon,  and  went  herself  to  let  him 
in.  There  he  was,  florid,  large,  and  a  little  anxious. 

"  I  felt,"  said  he,  "  as  if  something  had  happened  to 
you." 

She  stood  there  under  the  dim  hall-light,  a  girlish 
creature  in  her  white  dress,  but  with  wonderful  colour 
blooming  in  her  cheeks.  He  could  not  know  that  hate  had 
brought  it  there.  She  seemed  to  him  the  flower  of  her 
own  beauty,  rich,  overpowering.  She  held  the  door  open 
for  him,  and  when  he  had  followed  her  into  the  library, 
she  turned  and  put  both  her  hands  upon  his  arm,  her  soft 


THE  PRISONER  363 

nearness  like  a  perfume  and  a  breath.  To  Reardon,  she 
was  immeasurably  beautiful  and  as  far  as  that  above  him. 
His  heart  beating  terribly  in  his  ears,  he  drew  her  to 
him  sure  that,  in  her  aloofness,  she  would  reprove  him. 
But  Esther,  to  his  infinite  joy  and  amazement,  melted  into 
his  arms  and  clung  there. 

"  God !  "  said  Reardon.  She  heard  him  saying  it  more 
than  once  as  if  entirely  to  himself  and  no  smaller  word 
would  do.  "You  don't  —  "  he  said  to  her  then,  "you 
don't  —  care  about  me?  It  ain't  possible."  Reardon 
had  reverted  to  oldest  associations  and  forgotten  his  verb. 

She  did  not  tell  him  whether  she  cared  about  him.  She 
did  not  need  to.  The  constraining  of  her  touch  was 
enough,  and  presently  they  were  sitting  face  to  face,  he 
holding  her  hands  and  leaning  to  hear  her  whispered  words. 
For  she  had  immediately  her  question  ready : 

"  Do  you  think  I  ought  to  live  like  this  —  afraid  ?  " 

"  Afraid?  "  asked  Reardon.     "  Of  him?  " 

"  Yes.  He  came  this  afternoon.  There  is  nobody  to 
stand  between  us.  I  am  afraid." 

Reardon  made  the  only  answer  possible,  and  felt  the 
thrill  of  his  own  adequacy. 

"  I'll  stand  between  you." 

"  But  you  can't,"  she  said.     "  You've  no  right." 

"  There's  but  one  thing  for  you  to  do,"  said  Reardon. 
66  Tell  what  you're  telling  me  to  a  lawyer.  And  I'll  —  " 
he  hesitated.  He  hardly  knew  how  to  put  it  so  that  her 
sense  of  fitness  should  not  be  offended.  "  I'll  find  the 
money,"  he  ended  lamely. 

The  small  hands  stayed  willingly  in  his.  Reardon  was 
a  happy  man,  but  at  the  same  time  he  was  curiously 
ashamed.  He  was  a  clean  man  who  ate  moderately  and 
slept  well  and  had  the  proper  amount  of  exercise,  and  this 
excess  of  emotion  jarred  him  in  a  way  that  irritated  him. 


364  THE  PRISONER 

He  did  blame  Jeff,  who  was  at  the  bottom  of  this  beautiful 
creature's  misery.  Still,  if  Jeff  had  not  left  her,  she 
would  not  be  sitting  here  now  with  the  white  hands  in  his. 
But  he  was  conscious  of  a  disturbing  element  of  the  un 
lawful,  like  eating  a  hurtful  dish  at  dinner.  Reardon  had 
lived  too  long  in  a  cultivating  of  the  middle  way  to  embark 
with  joyousness  on  illicit  possessing.  As  the  traditions 
of  Addington  were  wafting  Alston  Choate  away  from  this 
primitive  little  Circe  on  her  isle,  so  his  acquired  habits 
of  safe  and  healthful  living  were  wafting  him.  If  his  inner 
refusals  could  have  been  spoken  crudely  out  they  would 
have  amounted  to  a  miserable  plea: 

"  Look  here.  It  ain't  because  I  don't  want  you.  But 
there's  Jeff." 

For  Reardon  was  not  only  a  good  fellow,  but  he  had 
gazed  with  a  wistful  awe  on  the  traditions  of  Adding- 
ton's  upper  class.  He  had  tried  honestly  to  look  like  the 
men  born  to  it ;  he  never  owned  even  to  himself  that  he  felt 
ill  at  ease  in  it.  Yet  he  did  regard  it  with  a  reverence  the 
men  that  made  it  were  far  from  feeling,  and  he  knew  some 
thing  was  due  it.  He  drew  back,  releasing  gently  the 
white  hands  that  lay  in  his.  He  wanted  to  kiss  them,  but 
he  was  not  even  yet  sure  they  were  enough  his  to  justify 
it.  He  cleared  his  throat. 

"  The  man  for  you  to  go  to,"  said  he,  "  is  Alston 
Choate.  I  don't  like  him,  but  he's  square  as  a  die.  And 
if  you  can  get  yourself  where  it'll  be  possible  to  speak  to 
you  without  knowing  there's  another  man  stepping  be 
tween  —  "  he  hesitated,  his  own  heart  beating  for  her  and 
the  decencies  of  Addington  holding  him  back.  "  Hang  it, 
Esther,"  he  burst  forth,  "  you  know  where  I  stand." 

"Do  I?"  said  Esther.  * 

She  rose,  and,  looking  wan,  gave  him  her  hand.  And 
Reardon  got  out  of  the  room,  feeling  rather  more  of  a 


THE  PRISONER  365 

sneak  than  Alston  had  when  he  went  away.  Esther  stood 
still  until  she  heard  the  door  close  behind  him.  Then 
she  ran  out  of  the  room  and  upstairs,  to  hide  herself,  if 
she  could,  from  the  exasperated  thought  of  the  men  who 
had  failed  her.  She  hated  them  all.  They  owed  her 
something,  protection,  or  cherishing  tenderness.  She 
could  not  know  it  was  Addington  that  had  got  hold  of 
them  in  one  way  or  another  and  kept  them  doggedly  faith 
ful  to  its  own  ideals.  As  she  was  stepping  along  the  hall, 
Madame  Beattie  called  her. 

"  Esther,  stop  a  minute.     I  want  you." 

Esther  paused,  and  then  came  slowly  to  the  door  and 
stood  there.  She  looked  like  a  sulky  child,  with  the 
beauty  of  the  child  and  the  charm.  She  hated  Madame 
Beattie  too  much  to  gaze  directly  at  her,  but  she  knew  what 
she  should  see  if  she  did  look:  an  old  woman  absolutely 
brazen  in  her  defiance  of  the  softening  arts  of  dress,  di 
vested  of  every  bewildering  subterfuge,  sitting  in  a  circle 
of  candlelight  in  the  adequate  company  of  her  book. 

"  Esther,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  "  you  may  have  the 
necklace." 

Then  Esther  did  glance  quickly  at  her.  She  wondered 
what  Madame  Beattie  thought  she  could  get  out  of  giving 
up  the  adored  gewgaw  into  other  hands. 

"  I  don't  want  it,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "  I'd  much 
rather  have  the  money  for  it.  Get  the  money  and  bring 
it  to  me." 

Esther  curled  her  lip  a  little  in  the  scorn  she  really 
felt.  She  could  not  conceive  of  any  woman's  being  so  lost 
to  woman's  perquisites  as  to  confess  baldly  her  need  of 
money  above  trinkets. 

"  But  you'd  better  go  to  the  right  man  for  it,"  said 
Madame  Beattie.  "  It  isn't  Alston  Choate.  Jeff's  the 
man,  my  dear.  He's  cleverer  than  the  devil  if  you  once 


366  THE  PRISONER 

get  him  started.     Not  that  I  think  you  could.     He's  done 
with  you,  I  fancy." 

Esther,  still  speechless,  wondered  if  she  could.  It  was 
a  challenge  of  precisely  the  force  Madame  Beattie  meant 
it  to  be. 


XXXII 

The  next  morning,  a  sweet  one  of  warmth  and  gently 
drifting  leaves,  Esther  went  to  call  on  Lydia,  and  Madame 
Beattie,  with  a  satirical  grin,  looked  after  her  from  the 
window.  Madame  Beattie's  understanding  of  the  human 
mind  had  given  her  a  dramatic  hold  on  the  world  when 
the  world  loved  her,  and  it  was  mechanically  serving  her 
now  in  these  little  deeds  that  were  only  of  a  mean  im 
portance,  though,  from  the  force  of  habit,  she  played  the 
game  so  hard.  Esther  was  very  fresh  and  pretty  in  her 
white  dress  with  an  artful  parasol  that  cast  a  freshening 
glow.  She  had  the  right  expression,  too,  the  calmness  of 
one  who  makes  a  commonplace  morning  call. 

And  it  was  not  Lydia  who  saw  her  coming.  It  was 
Jeff,  in  his  working  blouse  and  shabby  trousers,  standing 
on  a  cool  corner  of  the  veranda  and  finishing  his  morn 
ing  smoke  before  he  went  out  to  picking  early  apples. 
Esther  knew  at  precisely  what  instant  he  caught  sight 
of  her,  and  saw  him  knock  out  his  pipe  into  the  garden 
bed  below  the  veranda  and  lay  it  on  the  rail.  Then 
he  waited  for  her,  and  she  was  almost  amusedly  prepared 
for  his  large-eyed  wonder  and  the  set  of  the  jaw  which 
betrayed  his  certainty  of  having  something  difficult  to 
meet.  It  was  not  thus  he  had  been  used  to  greet  her  on 
sweet  October  mornings  in  those  other  days.  Suddenly 
he  turned  with  a  quick  gesture  of  the  hand  as  if  he  were 
warning  some  one  back,  and  Esther,  almost  at  the  steps, 
understood  that  he  had  heard  Lydia  coming  and  had  tried 

367 


368  THE  PRISONER 

to  stop  her.  Lydia  evidently  had  not  understood  and  ran 
innocently  out  on  some  errand  of  her  own.  Seeing  Esther, 
she  halted  an  appreciable  instant.  Then  something  as 
quickly  settled  itself  in  her  mind,  and  she  advanced  and 
stood  at  the  side  of  Jeff.  Esther  furled  her  parasol  and 
came  up  the  steps,  and  her  face  did  not  for  an  instant 
change  in  its  sweet  seriousness.  She  looked  at  Lydia  with 
a  faint,  almost,  it  might  seem,  a  pitying  smile. 

"  I  thought,"  said  she,  "  after  what  I  said,  I  ought  to 
come,  to  reassure  you." 

Neither  Jeff  nor  Lydia  seemed  likely  to  move,  and 
Esther  stood  there  looking  from  one  to  the  other  with  her 
concerned  air  of  having  something  to  do  for  them.  It 
was  only  a  moment,  yet  it  seemed  to  Lydia  as  if  they 
had  been  communing  a  long  time,  in  some  hidden  fashion, 
and  learning  amazingly  to  understand  each  other.  That 
is,  she  was  understanding  Esther,  and  the  outcome  terri 
fied  her.  Esther  seemed  more  dangerous  than  ever,  bear 
ing  gifts.  But  Lydia  could  almost  always  do  the  sensible 
thing  in  an  emergency  and  keep  emotion  to  be  quelled  in 
solitude. 

"  Come  in,"  said  she,  "  and  sit  down.  Jeff,  won't  you 
move  the  chairs  into  the  shady  corner?  We'd  better  not 
go  into  the  library.  Farvie's  there." 

Jeff  awoke  from  his  tranced  surprise  and  the  two  women 
followed  him  to  the  seclusion  of  the  vines.  There  Esther 
took  the  chair  he  set  for  her,  and  looked  gravely  at  Lydia, 
as  she  said: 

"  I  was  very  hasty.  I  told  him  —  "  She  indicated  Jeff 
with  a  little  gesture.  It  seemed  she  found  some  signifi 
cance  in  the  informality  of  the  pronoun  —  "I  told  him  I 
had  found  out  who  took  the  necklace.  I  knew  of  course 
he  would  tell  you.  And  I  came  to  keep  you  from  being 
troubled." 


THE  PRISONER  369 

"  Lydia,"  said  Jeff,  with  the  effect  of  stepping  quickly 
in  between  them,  "  go  into  the  house.  This  is  some 
thing  that  doesn't  concern  you  in  the  least." 

Lydia,  very  pale  now,  was  looking  at  Esther,  in  a 
fixed  antagonism.  Her  hands  were  tightly  clasped.  She 
looked  like  a  creature  braced  against  a  blow.  But  Esther 
seemed  of  all  imaginable  persons  the  least  likely  to  deliver 
a  blow  of  any  sort.  She  was  gracefully  relaxed  in  her 
chair,  one  delicate  hand  holding  the  parasol  and  the  other 
resting,  with  the  fingers  upcurled  like  lily  petals,  on  her 
knee. 

"  No,"  said  Lydia,  not  looking  at  Jeff,  though  she  an 
swered  him,  "  I  sha'n't  go  in.  It  does  concern  me.  That's 
what  she  came  for.  She's  told  you  so.  To  accuse  me  of 
taking  it." 

With  the  last  words,  a  little  scorn  ran  into  her  voice. 
It  was  a  scorn  of  what  Esther  might  do,  and  it  warmed 
her  and  made  her  suddenly  feel  equal  to  the  moment. 

"  No,"  said  Esther,  in  her  softest  tone,  a  sympathetic 
tone,  full  of  a  grave  concern.  "  It  was  only  to  confess 
I  ought  not  to  have  said  it.  Whatever  I  knew,  I  ought  to 
have  kept  it  to  myself.  For  there  was  the  necklace.  You 
had  sent  it  back.  You  had  done  wrong,  but  what  better 
could  you  do  than  send  it  back?  And  I  understand  —  " 
she  glowed  a  little  now,  turning  to  Jeff  —  "I  under 
stand  how  wonderful  it  was  of  you  to  take  it  on  yourself." 

Jeff  was  frowning,  and  though  facing  her,  looking  no 
further  than  the  lily-petalled  hand.  Esther  was  quite 
sure  he  was  dwelling  on  the  hand  with  inevitable  appre 
ciation.  She  had  a  feeling  that  he  was  frowning  because 
it  distracted  him  from  his  task  of  pleasing  Lydia  and  at 
the  same  time  meeting  her  own  sympathetic  tribute.  But 
he  was  not.  Esther  knew  a  great  many  things  about  men, 
but  she  was  naively  unconscious  of  their  complete  detach- 


370  THE  PRISONER 

ment  from  feminine  allurements  when  they  are  summoned 
to  affairs. 

"Esther,"  said  Jeff,  before  Lydia  could  speak,  "just 
why  are  you  here  ?  " 

"  I  told  you,"  said  Esther,  with  a  pretty  air  of  pained 
surprise.  "  To  tell  Lydia  she  mustn't  be  unhappy." 

Then  Lydia  found  her  tongue. 

"  I'm  not  unhappy,"  she  said,  with  a  brutality  of  inci- 
siveness  which  offers  the  bare  fact  with  no  concern  for  its 
effect.  "  I  took  the  necklace.  But  I  don't  know,"  said 
Lydia,  with  one  of  her  happy  convictions  that  she  really 
had  a  legal  mind  and  might  well  follow  its  inspirations, 
"  I  don't  know  whether  it  is  stealing  to  take  a  thing 
away  from  a  person  who  has  stolen  it  herself." 

"  Lydia !  "  said  Jeff  warningly. 

He  hardly  knew  why  he  was  stopping  her.  Certainly 
not  in  compassion  for  Esther;  she,  at  this  moment,  was 
merely  an  irritating  cause  of  a  spoiled  morning.  But 
Lydia,  he  felt,  like  a  careering  force  that  had  slipped  con 
trol,  must  be  checked  before  she  did  serious  harm. 

"  You  know,"  said  Lydia,  now  looking  Esther  calmly  in 
the  eye,  "  you  know  you  were  the  first  to  steal  the  neck 
lace.  You  stole  it  years  ago,  from  Madame  Beattie.  No, 
I  don't  know  whether  it's  stealing  to  take  it  from  you  when 
you'd  no  business  to  have  it  anyway.  I  must  ask  some 


one." 


Lydia  was  no  longer  pale  with  apprehension.  The  rose 
was  on  her  cheek.  Her  eyes  glowed  with  mischief  and  the 
lust  of  battle.  Once  she  darted  a  little  smiling  look  at 
Jeff.  "  Come  on,"  it  seemed  to  say.  "  I  can't  be  worse 
off  than  I  am.  Let's  put  her  through  her  paces  and  get 
something  out  of  it  —  fun,  at  least." 

Esther  looked  back  at  her  in  that  pained  forbearance 


THE  PRISONER  371 

which  clothed  her  like  a  transfiguring  atmosphere.  Then 
she  drew  a  sharp  breath. 

"  Jeff !  "  she  said,  turning  to  him. 

The  red  had  mounted  to  his  forehead.  He  admired 
Lydia,  and  with  some  wild  impulse  of  his  own,  loved  her 
bravado. 

"Oh,  come,  Lydia,"  he  said.  "We  can't  talk  like 
that.  If  Esther  means  to  be  civil  —  " 

Yet  he  did  not  think  Esther  meant  to  be  civil.  Only 
he  was  hard  pushed  between  the  two,  and  said  the  thing 
that  came  to  him.  But  it  came  empty  and  went  empty  to 
them,  and  he  knew  it. 

"  She  doesn't  mean  to  be  civil,"  said  Lydia,  still  in  her 
wicked  en j  oyment.  "  I  don't  know  what  she  does  mean, 
but  it's  not  to  be  nice  to  me.  And  I  don't  know  what  she's 
come  for  —  "  here  her  old  vision  of  Jeff  languishing  un- 
visited  in  the  dungeon  of  her  fancy  rose  suddenly  before 
her  and  she  ended  hotly  —  "  after  all  this  time." 

Again  Esther  turned  to  Jeff  and  spoke  his  name,  as 
if  summoning  him  in  a  situation  she  could  not,  however 
courageous,  meet  alone.  But  Lydia  had  thought  of  some 
thing  else. 

"  I  don't  know  what  you  can  do  to  me,"  she  said,  "  and 
I  don't  much  care.  Except  for  Farvie  and  Anne.  But  I 
know  this.  If  you  can  arrest  me  for  stealing  from  you 
something  you'd  stolen  before,  why  then  I  shall  say  right 
off  I  did  it.  And  when  I  do  it,  I  shall  tell  all  I  know  about 
the  necklace  and  how  you  took  it  from  Madame  Beattie  — 
and  oh,  my  soul !  "  said  Lydia,  rising  from  her  chair  and 
putting  her  finger  tips  together  in  an  unconsidered  ges 
ture,  "  there's  Madame  Beattie  now." 

Esther  too  rose,  murder  in  her  heart  but  still  a  solici 
tous  sadness  in  her  eyes,  and  turned,  following  Lydia's 


372  THE  PRISONER 

gaze,  to  the  steps  where  Denny  had  drawn  up  and  Madame 
Beattie  was  alighting  from  the  victoria.  Jeff,  going  for 
ward  to  meet  her,  took  courage  since  Denny  was  not 
driving  away.  Whatever  Madame  Beattie  had  come  to 
do,  she  meant  to  make  quick  work  of  it. 

"  Jeff,"  said  Esther,  at  his  elbow,  "  Jeff,  I  must  go. 
This  is  too  painful  for  everybody.  I  can't  bear  it." 

"  That's  right,"  said  Jeff  in  the  kindness  of  sudden  re 
lief.  "  Run  along." 

Madame  Beattie  had  decided  otherwise.  At  the  top  of 
the  steps  in  her  panoply  of  black  chiffon,  velvet,  ostrich 
feathers  —  clothes  so  rich  in  the  beginning  and  so  well 
made  that  they  seemed  always  too  unchanged  to  be  thrown 
away  and  so  went  on  in  a  squalid  perpetuity  —  she  laid 
a  hand  on  Esther's  wrist. 

"  Come,  come,  Esther,"  said  she,  "  don't  run  away.  I 
came  to  see  you  as  much  as  anybody." 

Esther  longed  to  shake  off  the  masterful  old  hand,  but 
she  would  not.  A  sad  passivity  became  her  best  unless 
she  relinquished  every  possible  result  of  the  last  ten  min 
utes.  And  it  must  have  had  some  result.  Jeff  had,  at 
least,  been  partly  won.  Surely  there  was  an  implied  inti 
macy  in  his  quick  undertone  when  he  had  bade  her  run 
along.  So  Madame  Beattie  went  on  cheerfully  leading 
her  captive  and  yet,  with  an  art  Esther  hated  her  for, 
seeming  to  keep  the  wrist  to  lean  on,  and  Lydia,  who  had 
brought  another  chair,  greeted  the  new  visitor  with  an 
unaffected  pleasure.  She  still  liked  her  so  much  that  it 
was  not  probable  anything  Madame  Beattie  could  say  or 
do  would  break  the  tie.  And  Madame  Beattie  liked  her : 
only  less  than  the  assurance  of  her  own  daily  comfort. 
The  pure  stream  of  affection  had  got  itself  sadly  sullied 
in  these  later  years.  She  hardly  thought  now  of  the  way 
it  started  among  green  hills  under  a  morning  sun. 


THE  PRISONER  873 

She  seated  herself,  still  not  releasing  Esther  until  she 
also  had  sunk  into  a  chair  by  her  side,  and  refreshed  her 
self  from  a  little  viniagrette.  Then  she  winked  her  eyes 
open  in  a  way  she  had,  as  if  returning  from  distant  con 
siderations  and  said  cheerfully: 

"  I  suppose  you're  talking  about  that  stupid  necklace." 

Lydia  broke  into  a  little  laugh,  she  did  not  in  the  least 
know  why,  except  that  Madame  Beattie  was  always  so 
amusing  to  her.  Madame  Beattie  gave  her  a  nod  as  if 
in  acknowledgment  of  the  tribute  of  applause,  continuing: 

"  Now  I've  come  to  be  disagreeable.  Esther  has  been 
agreeable,  I've  no  doubt.  Jeff,  I  hope  you're  being  nice 
to  her." 

A  startled  look  came  into  Lydia's  eyes.  Why  should 
Madame  Beattie  want  Jeff  to  be  nice  to  her  when  she 
knew  how  false  Esther  had  been  and  would  always  be? 

66  Esther,"  continued  Madame  Beattie,  "  has  been  a  silly 
child.  She  took  my  necklace,  years  ago,  and  Jeff  very 
chivalrously  engaged  to  pay  me  for  it  and  —  " 

"  That  will  do,"  said  Jeff  harshly.  "  We  all  know  what 
happened  years  ago.  Anyhow  Esther  does.  And  I  do. 
We'll  leave  Lydia  out  of  this.  I  don't  know  what  you've 
come  here  to  say,  Madame  Beattie,  but  whatever  it  is,  I 
prefer  it  should  be  said  to  me.  I'm  the  only  one  it  con 
cerns." 

"  No,  you're  not,"  said  Lydia,  swelling  with  rage  at 
everybody  who  would  keep  her  from  him.  "  I'm  concerned. 
I'm  concerned  more  than  anybody." 

Esther  glanced  up  at  her  quickly  and  Madame  Beattie 
shook  her  head. 

"  You've  been  a  silly  child,  too,"  she  said.  "  You  took 
the  necklace  to  give  it  back  to  me.  Through  Jeff,  I 
understand." 

"  No,  I  didn't,"  said  Lydia,  in  a  passion  to  tell  the  truth 


374  THE  PRISONER 

at  a  moment  when  it  seemed  to  her  they  were  all  willing, 
for  one  result  or  another,  to  turn  and  twist  it.  "  I  gave  it 
back  to  Jeff  so  he  could  carry  it  to  you  and  say,  *  Here 
it  is.  I've  paid  you  a  lot  of  money  on  it  — ' : 

"  Who  told  you  that?  "  flashed  Esther.  She  had  for 
gotten  her  patient  calm. 

"  I  told  her,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "  Don't  be  jealous, 
Esther.  Jeff  never  would  have  told  her  in  the  world. 
He's  as  dumb  as  a  fish." 

"  And  so  he  could  say  to  you,"  Lydia  went  on  breath 
lessly,  "  '  Here's  the  horrid  thing.  And  now  you've  got  it 
I  don't  owe  you  money  but '  "  —  here  one  of  her  legal 
inspirations  came  to  her  and  she  added  triumphantly  — 
'  if  anything,  you  owe  me.' ' 

"You're  a  good  imp,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  in  care 
less  commendation,  "  but  if  everybody  told  the  truth  as 
you  do  there  wouldn't  be  any  drama.  Now  I'm  going  to 
tell  the  truth.  This  is  just  what  I  propose  doing,  and 
what  I  mean  somebody  else  shall  do.  I've  got  the  neck 
lace.  Good !  But  I  don't  want  it.  I  want  money." 

"  I  have  told  you,"  said  Jeff,  "  to  sell  it.  If  it's  worth 
what  you  say  —  " 

"  I  have  told  you,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  "  that  I  can't. 
It  is  a  question  of  honour,"  she  ended  somewhat  pom 
pously.  Yet  it  was  only  a  dramatic  pomposity.  Jeff  saw 
that.  "  When  it  was  given  me  by  a  certain  Royal  Person 
age,"  she  continued  and  Jeff  swore  under  his  breath.  He 
was  tired  of  the  Royal  Personage  —  "I  signed  an  agree 
ment  that  the  necklace  should  be  preserved  intact  and  that 
I  would  never  let  it  go  into  other  hands.  We've  been  all 
over  that." 

Jeff  moved  uneasily  in  his  chair.  He  thought  there  were 
things  he  might  say  to  Madame  Beattie  if  the  others  were 
not  present. 


THE  PRISONER  375 

"  But,"  said  Madame  Beattie  dramatically,  "  Esther 
stole  it.  Lydia  here,  from  the  sweetest  and  most  ridiculous 
of  motives,  stole  it  from  Esther.  Nobody  knows  that  but 
us  three  and  that  cold-blooded  fish,  Alston  Choate.  He 
won't  tell.  But  unless  Jeff  —  you,  Jeff  dear  —  unless  Jeff 
makes  himself  responsible  for  my  future,  I  propose  to  tell 
the  whole  story  of  the  necklace  in  print  and  make  these 
two  young  women  wish  I  hadn't.  Better  protect  them, 
Jeff.  Better  make  yourself  responsible  for  Aunt 
Patricia." 

"  You  propose  telling  it  in  print,"  said  Jeff  slowly. 
"  You  said  so  yesterday.  But  I  ought  to  have  warned 
you  then  that  Weedon  Moore  won't  print  it  —  not  after 
I've  seen  him.  He  knows  I'd  wring  his  neck." 

"  There  are  plenty  of  channels,"  said  Madame  Beattie, 
with  an  unmoved  authority.  "  Journals  here,  journals 
abroad.  Why,  Jeff !  "  suddenly  her  voice  rose  in  a  shrill 
note  and  startled  them.  Her  face  convulsed  and  a  deeper 
hue  ran  into  it.  "  I'm  a  personage,  Jeff.  The  world  is 
my  friend.  You  seem  to  think  because  I've  lost  my  voice 
I'm  not  Patricia  Beattie.  But  I  am.  I  am  Patricia 
Beattie.  And  I  have  power." 

Lydia  made  a  movement  toward  her  and  laid  her  hands 
together,  impetuously,  in  applause.  Whether  Madame 
Beattie  were  willing,  as  it  had  seemed  a  second  ago,  to  sac 
rifice  her  for  the  sake  of  squeezing  money  out  of  Jeff, 
she  did  not  care.  Something  dramatic  in  her  discerned 
its  like  in  the  other  woman  and  responded.  But  Jeff, 
startled  for  an  instant,  felt  only  the  brutal  impulse  to  tell 
Madame  Beattie  if  the  world  were  so  much  her  friend,  it 
might  support  her.  And  here  appeared  the  last  person 
any  of  them  desired  to  see  if  they  were  to  fight  matters  to 
a  finish:  the  colonel  in  his  morning  calm,  his  finger,  even 
so  early,  between  the  leaves  of  a  book.  As  the  year  had 


376  THE  PRISONER 

waned  and  there  was  not  so  much  outside  work  to  do  he 
had  betaken  himself  to  his  gentler  pursuits,  and  in  the 
renewed  health  of  his  muscles  felt  himself  a  better  man. 
He  had  his  turn  of  being  startled,  there  was  no  doubt  of 
that.  Esther  here!  his  eyes  were  all  for  her.  It  meant 
something  significant,  they  seemed  to  say.  Why,  except 
for  an  emphatic  reason,  should  she,  after  this  absence,  have 
come  to  Jeff?  He  even  seemed  to  be  ignoring  Madame 
Beattie  as  he  stepped  forward  to  Esther,  with  outstretched 
hand.  There  was  a  welcome  in  his  manner,  a  pleasure 
it  smote  Lydia's  heart  to  see.  She  knew  what  the  scene 
meant  to  him :  some  shadowy  renewal  of  the  old  certainties 
that  had  made  Jeff's  life  like  other  men's.  For  an  instant 
under  the  spell  of  the  colonel's  belief,  she  saw  Jeff  going 
back  and  loving  Esther  as  if  the  break  had  never  been.  It 
seemed  incredible  that  any  one  could  look  at  her  as  the 
colonel  was  looking  now,  wTith  warmth,  even  with  grati 
tude,  after  she  had  been  so  hateful.  And  Esther  was  re 
ceiving  it  all  with  the  prettiest  grace.  She  might  even 
have  been  pinning  the  olive  leaf  into  her  dress. 

"  Well,"  said  he.     "Well!" 

Lydia  was  maliciously  glad  that  even  he  could  find  noth 
ing  more  to  say. 

"  What  a  pleasant  morning,"  he  ended  lamely  yet  safely, 
and  conceived  the  brilliant  addition,  "  You'll  stay  to 
dinner."  As  he  said  it  he  was  conscious,  too  late,  that 
dinner  was  several  hours  away.  And  meantime  Esther 
stood  and  looked  up  in  his  eyes  with  an  expression  for 
which  Lydia  at  once  mentally  found  a  name:  soulful,  that 
was  what  it  was,  she  viciously  decided. 

Madame  Beattie  gave  a  little  ironic  crow  of  laugh 
ter. 

"  Sit  down,  Esther,"  she  said,  "  and  let  Mr.  Blake  shake 
hands  with  me.  No,  I  can't  stay  to  dinner.  Esther  may, 


THE  PRISONER  377 

if  she  likes,  but  I've  business  on  my  hands.  It's  with  that 
dirty  little  man  Jeff's  got  such  a  prejudice  against." 

"Not  Weedon  Moore,"  conjectured  the  colonel.  "If 
you've  any  law  business,  Madame  Beattie,  you'd  far  better 
go  to  Alston  Choate.  Moore's  no  kind  of  a  man." 

"  He's  the  right  kind  for  me,"  said  Madame  Beattie. 
"  No  manners,  no  traditions,  no  scruples.  It's  a  dirty 
job  I've  got  for  him,  and  it  takes  a  dirty  man  to  do  it." 

She  had  risen  now,  and  was  smiling  placidly  up  at  the 
colonel.  He  frowned  at  her,  involuntarily.  He  was  ready 
to  accept  Madame  Beattie's  knowing  neither  good  nor  evil, 
but  she  seemed  to  him  singularly  unpleasant  in  flaunting 
that  lack  of  bias.  She  was  quite  conscious  of  his  distaste, 
but  it  didn't  trouble  her.  Unproductive  opinions  were 
nothing  to  her  now,  especially  in  Addington. 

"  You're  not  going,  too,"  said  the  colonel,  as  Esther 
rose  and  followed  her.  "  I  hoped  —  "  But  what  he  hoped 
he  kept  himself  from  saying. 

"  I  must,"  said  Esther,  with  a  little  deprecatory  look 
and  another  significant  one  at  Madame  Beattie's  back. 
"  Good-bye." 

She  threw  Lydia,  in  her  scornful  silence  there  in  the 
background,  a  smile  and  nod. 

"  But  -  '  the  colonel  began.  Again  he  had  to  stop. 
How  could  he  ask  her  to  come  again  when  he  was  in  the 
dark  about  her  reason  for  coming  at  all? 

"  I  have  to  go,"  she  said.     "  I  really  have  to,  this  time." 

Meantime  Jeff,  handing  Madame  Beattie  into  the  car 
riage,  had  had  his  word  with  her. 

"  You'll  do  nothing  until  I  see  you." 

"  If  you  see  me  moderately  soon,"  said  Madame  Beattie 
pleasantly.  "  Esther,  are  you  coming?  " 

"  No,"  said  Esther,  with  a  scrupulous  politeness.  "  No, 
thank  you.  I  shall  walk." 


378  THE  PRISONER 

But  before  she  went,  and  well  in  the  rear  of  the  carriage, 
so  that  even  Denny  should  not  see,  she  gave  Jen0  one  look, 
a  suffused,  appealing  look  that  bade  him  remember  how 
unhappy  she  was,  how  unprotected  and,  most  of  all,  how 
feminine.  She  and  the  carriage  also  had  in  the  next 
instant  gone,  and  Jeff  went  stolidly  back  up  the  steps. 
There  was  sweat  on  his  forehead  and  he  drew  his  breath 
like  a  man  dead-tired. 

"  My  son,"  began  the  colonel. 

"  Don't,"  said  Jeff  shortly.  He  knew  what  his  father 
would  like  to  do:  ask,  in  the  sincerest  sympathy,  why 
Esther  had  come,  discuss  it  and  decide  with  him  whether 
she  was  to  come  again  and  stay,  whether  it  would  be  ill  or 
well  for  him.  The  red  mounted  to  the  colonel's  forehead, 
and  Jeff  put  a  hand  on  his  shoulder.  He  couldn't  help 
remembering  that  his  father  had  called  him  "  son  "  in  a 
poignancy  of  sympathy  all  through  the  trials  of  the  past, 
and  it  hurt  to  hear  it  now.  It  linked  that  time  with  this, 
as  Madame  Beattie,  in  her  unabashed  self-seeking,  linked 
it.  Perhaps  he  was  never  to  escape.  A  prisoner,  that 
was  what  he  was.  They  were  all  prisoners,  Madame 
Beattie  to  her  squalid  love  of  gain,  Esther  to  her  ele 
mentary  love  of  herself,  Lydia  —  he  looked  at  her  as  she 
stood  still  in  the  background  like  a  handmaid  waiting. 
Why,  Lydia  was  a  prisoner,  as  he  had  thought  before, 
only  not,  as  he  had  believed  then,  to  the  glamour  of  love, 
but  love,  actual  love  for  him,  the  kind  that  stands  the 
stress  of  all  the  homely  services  and  disillusioning.  A 
smile  broke  over  his  face,  and  Lydia,  incredulously  accept 
ing  it,  gave  a  little  sob  that  couldn't  be  prevented  in  time, 
and  took  one  dancing  step.  She  ran  up  to  the  colonel, 
and  pulled  him  away  from  Jeff.  It  seemed  as  if  she  were 
about  to  make  him  dance,  too. 


THE  PRISONER  379 

"  Don't  bother  him,  Farvie,"  said  she.  "  He's  out  of 
prison !  he's  out  of  prison !  " 

She  had  said  it,  the  cruel  word,  and  Jeff  knew  she  could 
not  possibly  have  ventured  it  if  she  did  not  see  in  him 
something  fortunate  and  free. 


XXXIII 

"  Jeff!"  said  the  colonel.  Esther's  coming  seemed  so 
portentous  that  he  could  not  brook  imperfect  knowledge 
of  it.  "  Jeff,  did  Esther  come  to  — "  He  paused  there. 
What  could  Esther,  in  the  circumstances,  do?  Make 
advances?  Ask  to  be  forgiven? 

But  Jeff  was  meeting  the  half  question  comprehensively. 

"  I  don't  quite  know  what  she  came  for." 

"  Couldn't  you  have  persuaded  her,"  said  the  colonel, 
hesitating,  "to  stay?" 

"  No,"  said  Jeff.  "  Esther  doesn't  want  to  stay.  We 
mustn't  think  of  that." 

"  I  am  sorry,"  said  the  colonel,  and  Lydia  understood 
him  perfectly.  He  was  not  sorry  Esther  had  gone.  But 
he  was  sorry  the  whole  business  had  been  so  muddled  from 
the  start,  and  that  Jeff's  life  could  not  have  moved  on  like 
Addington  lives  in  general:  placid,  all  of  a  piece.  Lydia 
thought  this  yearning  of  his  for  the  complete  and  perfect 
was  because  he  was  old.  She  felt  quite  capable  of  taking 
Jeff's  life  as  it  was,  and  fitting  it  together  in  a  striking 
pattern. 

"  Come  in,  Farvie,"  she  said.  "  You  haven't  corrected 
Mary  Nellen's  translation." 

Jeff  was  being  left  alone  for  his  own  good,  and  he  smiled 
after  the  kind  little  schemer,  before  he  took  his  hat  and 
went  down  town  to  find  Weedon  Moore.  As  he  went, 
withdrawn  into  a  solitariness  of  his  own,  so  that  he  only 
absently  answered  the  bows  of  those  he  met,  he  thought 

curiously  about  his  own  life.     And  he  was  thinking  as  his 

380 


THE  PRISONER  381 

father  had:  his  life  was  not  of  a  pattern.  It  was  a  suc 
cession  of  disjointed  happenings.  There  was  the  first 
wild  frothing  of  the  yeast  of  youth.  There  was  the 
nemesis  who  didn't  like  youth  to  make  such  a  fool  of  itself. 
She  had  to  throw  him  into  prison.  While  he  was  there 
he  had  actually  seemed  to  do  things  that  affected 
prison  discipline.  He  was  mentioned  outside.  He  was 
even,  because  he  could  write,  absurdly  pardoned.  It  had 
seemed  to  him  then  desirable  to  write  the  life  of  a  gentle 
man  criminal,  but  in  that  he  had  quite  lost  interest.  Then 
he  had  had  his  great  idea  of  liberty:  the  freedom  of  the 
will  that  saved  men  from  being  prisoners.  But  the  squalid 
tasks  remained  to  him  even  while  he  bragged  of  being  free : 
to  warn  Moore  away  from  meddling  with  women's  names, 
no  matter  how  Madame  Beattie  might  invite  him  to  do 
her  malicious  will,  to  warn  Madame  Beattie  even,  in  some 
fashion,  and  to  protect  Lydia.  Of  Esther  he  could  not 
think,  save  in  a  tiring,  bewildered  way.  She  seemed,  from 
the  old  habit  of  possession  justified  by  a  social  tie,  some 
how  a  part  of  him,  a  burden  of  which  he  could  never  rid 
himself  and  therefore  to  be  borne  patiently,  since  he 
could  not  know  whether  the  burden  were  actually  his  or 
not.  And  he  began  to  be  conscious  after  that  morning 
when  Esther  had  looked  at  him  with  primitive  woman's 
summons  to  the  protecting  male  that  Esther  was  calling 
him.  Sometimes  it  actually  tired  him  as  if  he  were  running 
in  answer  to  the  call,  whether  toward  it  or  away  from  it 
he  could  not  tell.  All  the  paths  were  mazes  and  the  lines 
of  them  bewildering  to  his  eyes.  He  would  wake  in  the 
night  and  wish  there  were  one  straight  path.  If  he  could 
have  known  that  at  this  time  Reardon  and  Alston  Choate 
had  also,  in  differing  ways,  this  same  consciousness  of 
Esther's  calling  it  could  not  have  surprised  him.  He 
would  not  have  known,  in  his  own  turmoil,  whether  to  urge 


382  THE  PRISONER 

them  to  go  or  not  to  go.  Esther  did  not  seem  to  him  a 
disturbing  force,  only  a  disconcerting  one.  You  might 
have  to  meet  it  to  have  done  with  it. 

But  now  at  Weedon's  office  door  he  paused  a  moment, 
hearing  a  voice,  the  little  man's  own,  slightly  declamatory, 
even  in  private,  and  went  in.  And  he  wished  he  had  not 
gone,  for  Miss  Amabel  sat  at  the  table,  signing  papers, 
and  he  instantly  guessed  the  signatures  were  not  in  the 
pursuance  of  her  business  but  to  the  advantage  of  Weedon 
Moore.  Whatever  she  might  be  doing,  she  was  not  con 
fused  at  seeing  him.  Her  designs  could  be  shouted  on  the 
housetops.  But  Moore  gave  him  a  foolishly  cordial  greet 
ing  mingled  with  a  confused  blotting  of  signatures  and  a 
hasty  shuffling  of  the  papers. 

"  Sit  down,  sit  down,"  he  said.  "  You  haven't  looked 
me  up  before,  not  since  — " 

"  No,"  said  Jeff.  "  Not  since  I  came  back.  I  don't 
think  I  ever  did.  I've  come  now  in  reference  to  a  rather 
scandalous  business." 

Miss  Amabel  moved  her  chair  back.  She  was  about  to 
rise. 

"  No,  please,"  said  Jeff.  "  Don't  go.  I'd  rather  like 
you  to  know  that  I'm  making  certain  threats  to  Moore 
here,  in  case  I  have  to  carry  them  out.  I'd  rather  you'd 
know  I  have  some  grounds.  I  never  want  you  to  think  the 
worst  of  me." 

"  I  always  think  the  best  of  you,"  said  Miss  Amabel, 
with  dignity  yet  helplessly.  She  sat  there  in  an  attitude 
of  waiting,  her  grave  glance  going  from  one  to  the  other, 
as  she  tried  to  understand. 

"  Madame  Beattie,"  said  Jeff  curtly  to  Moore,  "  is  likely 
to  give  you  some  personal  details  of  her  life.  If  you  print 
them  you'll  settle  with  me  afterward." 

"  O  Jeffrey !  "  said  Miss  Amabel.     "  Why  put  it  so  un- 


THE  PRISONER  383 

pleasantly?  Mr.  Moore  would  never  print  anything 
which  could  annoy  you  or  any  one.  We  mustn't  assume  he 
would." 

Moore,  standing,  one  fat  and  not  overclean  hand  on  the 
table,  looked  a  passionate  gratitude  to  her.  He  seemed 
about  to  gush  into  protest.  Of  course  he  wouldn't.  Of 
course  he  would  publish  only  what  was  of  the  highest 
character  and  also  what  everybody  wanted  him  to. 

"  That's  all,"  said  Jeff.  He,  too,  was  standing  and 
he  now  turned  to  go. 

"  I  wish  — "  said  Miss  Amabel  impulsively.  She  got  on 
her  feet  and  stood  there  a  minute,  a  stately  figure  in  spite 
of  her  blurred  lines.  "  I  wish  we  could  have  your  co 
operation,  Jeff.  Mr.  Moore  is  going  to  run  for  mayor." 

"  So  I  hear,"  said  Jeff,  and  his  mind  added,  "  And 
you  are  financing  his  campaign,  you  old  dear,  and  only  a 
minute  ago  you  were  signing  over  securities." 

"  It  means  so  much,"  said  Miss  Amabel,  "  to  have  a  man 
who  is  a  friend  of  labour.  We  ought  to  combine  on  that. 
It's  enough  to  heal  our  differences." 

"  Pardon  me,"  said  Jeff.  "  I  have  to  go.  But  mayn't 
I  take  you  home  ?  " 

"  No,"  said  Amabel ;  "  I've  another  bit  of  business  to 
settle.  But  think  it  over,  Jeff.  We  can't  afford  to  let 
personal  issues  influence  us  when  the  interest  of  the  town 
is  at  stake." 

"  Surely  not,"  said  Jeff.     «  Addington  forever !  " 

As  he  went  down  the  stairs  he  smiled  a  little,  remember 
ing  Weedie  had  not  spoken  a  word  after  his  first  greeting. 
But  Jeff  didn't  waste  much  thought  on  Weedie.  He  be 
lieved,  at  the  crisis,  Weedie  could  be  managed.  Miss 
Amabel  had  startled  his  mind  broad  awake  to  what  she 
called  the  great  issues  and  what  he  felt  were  vital  ones. 
He  went  on  pyer  the  bridge,  and  up  the  stairs  of  the  old 


384  THE  PRISONER 

Choate  Building  to  Alston's  office,  and,  from  some  sudden 
hesitancy,  tapped  on  the  door. 

"  Come  in,5'  called  Alston,  and  he  went. 

Alston  sat  at  the  table,  not  reading  a  novel  as  Lydia 
and  too  many  of  his  clients  had  found  him,  but  idle,  with 
not  even  a  book  at  hand.  There  were  packets  of  papers, 
in  a  methodical  sequence,  but  everything  on  the  table 
bore  the  aspect  of  an  order  not  akin  to  work.  Choate 
looked  pale  and  harassed.  "You?"  said  his  upward 
glance.  "  You,  of  all  the  people  I've  been  thinking  of? 
What  are  you  here  for?  " 

There  was  though,  in  the  look,  a  faint  relief.  Perhaps 
he  thought  something  connected  with  the  harassing  appeal 
of  Esther,  the  brutalising  stir  of  her  in  the  air,  could  be 
cleared  up.  Jeff  was  to  surprise  him. 

"  Choate,"  said  he,  "  have  you  been  asked  to  run  for 
mayor?  " 

Choate  frowned.     He  wasn't  thinking  of  public  office. 

"  I've  been  —  approached,"  he  said,  as  if  the  word  made 
it  the  more  remote. 

"What  did  you  say?" 

"  Said  I  wouldn't.  Jeff,  I  believe  you  started  the  con 
founded  thing." 

"  I've  talked  a  lot,"  said  Jeff.  "  But  any  fool  knows 
you've  got  to  do  it.  Choate,  you're  about  the  only  hope 
of  tradition  and  decency  here  in  Addington.  Don't  you 
know  that?" 

"  I'm  a  weak  man,"  said  Alston,  looking  up  at  him  un 
happily.  "  I  don't  half  care  for  these  things.  I  like 
the  decent  thing  done,  but,  Jeff,  I  don't  want  to  pitch  into 
the  dirty  business  and  call  names  and  be  called  names  and 
uncover  smells.  I'd  rather  quit  the  whole  business  and  go 
to  Europe." 

"  And  let  Addington  go  to  pot?     Why,  we'd  all  rather 


THE  PRISONER  385 

go  to  Europe,  if  Addington  could  be  kept  on  her  pins 
without  us.  But  she  can't.  We've  got  to  see  the  old  girl 
through." 

"  She's  gone  to  pot  anyway,"  said  Choate.  "  So's  the 
county.  There  aren't  any  Americans  now.  They're 
blasted  aliens." 

"Ain't  you  an  American?"  asked  Jeff,  forgetting  his 
grammar.  "  I  am.  And  I'm  going  to  die  in  my  tracks 
before  I'm  downed." 

"  You  will  be  downed." 

"  I  don't  care.  I  don't  care  whether  in  a  hundred  years' 
time  it's  stated  in  the  history  books  that  there  was  once  a 
little  tribe  called  New  Englanders  and  if  you  want  to  learn 
about  'em  the  philologists  send  you  to  the  inscriptions  of 
Mary  Wilkins  and  Robert  Frost." 

(This  was  before  Robert  Frost  had  come  into  his  fame, 
but  New  England  had  printed  a  verse  or  two  and  then  for 
gotten  them.) 

"  I  didn't  know  you  were  such  a  fellow,"  said  Choate, 
really  interested,  in  an  impersonal  way.  "  You  go  to  my 
head." 

"  Sometimes  I  think,"  said  Jeff,  not  half  noticing  him, 
"  that  what  really  was  doing  in  me  in  jail  was  country  — 
country  —  patriotism,  a  kind  of  irrational  thing  —  sort 
of  mother  love  applied  to  the  soil  —  the  thing  men  die  for. 
,  Call  it  liberty,  if  you  want  to,  but  it's  all  boiled  down  now 
to  Addington.  Choate,  don't  you  see  Addington  took 
hold  on  eternal  things?  Don't  you  know  how  deep  her 
roots  go?  She  was  settled  by  English.  You  and  I  are 
English.  We  aren't  going  to  let  east  of  Europe  or  south 
of  Europe  or  middle  Europe  come  over  here  and  turn  old 
Addington  into  something  that's  not  Anglo-Saxon.  O 
Choate,  wake  up.  Come  alive.  Stop  being  temperate. 
Run  for  mayor  and  beat  Weedie  out  of  his  skin." 


386  THE  PRISONER 

"  Dear  fellow,"  said  Choate,  looking  at  him  as  if  for  an 
instant  he  too  were  willing  to  speak  out,  "  you  live  in  a 
country  where  the  majority  rules.  And  the  majority  has 
a  perfect  right  to  the  government  it  wants.  And  you 
will  be  voted  down  by  ten  aliens  this  year  and  a  hundred 
next,  and  so  on,  because  the  beastly  capitalist  wants 
more  and  more  aliens  imported  to  do  his  work  and  the 
beastly  politician  wants  them  all  thrown  into  citizenship 
neck  and  heels,  so  he  can  have  more  votes.  You're 
defeated,  Jeff,  before  you  begin.  You're  defeated  by 
sheer  numbers." 

"  Then,  for  God's  sake,"  said  Jeff,  "  take  your  alien 
and  make  an  American  of  him." 

"  You  can't.  Could  I  take  you  to  Italy  and  make  an 
Italian  of  you,  or  to  Germany  and  make  a  German?  You 
might  do  something  with  their  children." 

"They  talk  about  the  melting-pot,"  said  Jeff  rather 
helplessly. 

"  They  do.  It's  a  part  of  our  rank  sentimentalism. 
You  can  pour  your  nationalities  in  but  they'll  no  more 
combine  than  Tarquin's  and  Lucretia's  blood.  No,  Jeff. 
America's  gone,  the  vision,  as  she  was  in  the  beginning. 
They've  throttled  her  among  them." 

Jeff  stood  looking  at  him,  flushed,  dogged,  defiant.  He 
had  a  vivid  beauty  at  the  moment,  and  Alston  woke  to  a 
startled  sense  of  what  the  young  Jeff  used  to  be.  But 
this  was  better.  There  was  something  beaten  into  this 
face  finer  far  than  youth. 

Jeff  seemed  to  be  meeting  him  as  if  their  minds  were  at 
grapples. 

"  The  handful  of  us,  old  New  England,  the  sprinkling 
of  us  that's  left,  we've  got  to  repel  invasion.  The  aliens 
are  upon  us." 


THE  PRISONER  387 

"  They've  even  brought  their  insect  pests,"  put  in  Als 
ton. 

"  Folks,"  said  Jeff,  "  that  know  no  more  about  the  pas 
sions  and  faithfulnesses  this  government  was  founded  on 
than  a  Hottentot  going  into  his  neighbour's  territory." 

66  Oh,  come,"  said  Alston,  "  give  'em  a  fair  show. 
They've  come  for  liberty.  You've  got  to  take  their  word 
for  it." 

"  Some  of  'em  have  come  to  avoid  being  skinned  alive, 
by  Islam,  some  to  get  money  enough  to  go  back  with  and 
be  rentiers.  The  Germans  have  come  to  show  us  the  beati 
tude  of  their  specially  anointed  way  of  life." 

"  Well,"  said  Alston  curtly,  "  we've  got  'em.  And 
they've  got  us.  You  can't  leaven  the  whole  lump." 

"  I  can't  look  much  beyond  Addington,"  said  Jeff.  "  I 
believe  I'm  dotty  over  the  old  girl.  I  don't  want  her  to  go 
back  to  being  Victorian,  but  I  want  her  to  be  right  —  hon 
est,  you  know,  and  standing  for  decent  things.  That's 
why  you're  going  to  be  mayor." 

Alston  made  no  answer,  but  when,  in  a  few  weeks'  time, 
some  citizens  of  weight  came  to  ask  him  again  if  he  would 
accept  the  nomination,  he  said,  without  parley,  that  he 
would.  And  it  was  not  Jeff  that  had  constrained  him ;  it 
was  the  look  in  his  mother's  eyes. 


XXXIV 

/ 

The  late  autumn  had  a  profusion  of  exhilarating  days. 
The  crops  kept  Jeff  in  the  garden  and  brought  his  fath<ir 
out  for  his  quota  of  pottering  care.  When  the  land  was 
cleared  for  ploughing  and  even  the  pile  of  rubbish  burned, 
Jeff  got  to  feeling  detached  again,  discontented  even,  and 
went  for  long  tramps,  sometimes  with  Alston  Choate. 
Esther,  seeing  them  go  by,  looked  after  them  in  a  con 
sternation  real  enough  to  blanch  her  damask  cheek.  What 
was  the  bond  between  them?  Whatever  bond  they  had 
formed  must  be  to  the  exclusion  of  her  and  her  dear  wishes, 
and  their  amity  enraged  her. 

Once,  in  walking,  she  saw  Jeff  turn  in  at  Miss  Amabel's 
gate,  and  she  did  not  swerve  but  actually  finished  her 
walk  and  came  back  that  way  praying,  with  the  concen 
tration  of  thought  which  is  an  assault  of  will,  that  he 
might  be  coming  out  and  meet  her.  And  it  happened  ac 
cording  to  her  desire.  There,  at  the  gate  was  Jeff,  hand 
somer,  according  to  a  woman's  jealous  eye,  than  she  had 
ever  seen  him,  fresh-coloured,  his  face  set  in  a  determina 
tion  that  was  not  feigned,  hard,  fit  for  any  muscular  task 
more  than  the  average  man  might  do.  Esther  was  look 
ing  her  prettiest.  She  continued  to  look  her  prettiest 
now,  so  far  as  woman's  art  could  serve  her,  for  she  could 
not  know  what  moment  might  summon  her  to  bring  her 
own  special  strength  to  bear.  Jeff,  at  sight  of  her,  took 
off  his  hat,  but  stopped  short  standing  inside  the  gate. 

Esther  understood.     He  wasn't  going  to  commit  her  to 

388 


THE  PRISONER  389 

walk  with  him  where  Addington  might  see.  She,  too, 
stopped,  her  heart  beating  as  fast  as  she  could  have 
desired  and  giving  her  a  bright  accession  of  colour.  Es 
ther  greatly  prized  her  damask  cheek. 

Jeff,  feeling  himself  summoned,  then  came  forward. 
He  looked  at  her  gravely,  and  he  was  at  a  loss.  How  to 
address  her !  But  Esther,  with  a  beguiling  accent  of  gen 
tleness,  began. 

"  Isn't  it  strange  ?  "  she  said,  wistfully  and  even  humbly, 
as  if  it  were  not  a  question  but  a  reflection  of  her  own, 
not  necessarily  to  be  answered. 

"What  is  strange?"  asked  Jeff,  with  a  kindly  note 
she  found  reassuring. 

"  You  and  me,"  said  Esther,  "  standing  here,  when  — 
I  don't  believe  you  were  going  to  speak." 

Her  poor  little  smile  looked  piteous  to  him  and  the 
lift  of  her  brows.  Jeff  was  sorry  for  her,  sorry  for  them 
both.  At  that  moment  he  was  not  summoning  energy  to 
distrust  her,  and  this  was  as  she  hoped. 

"  I'm  sorry,  Esther,"  he  said  impulsively.  "  I  did 
mean  to  speak.  It  wasn't  that.  I  only  don't  mean  to 
make  you  —  in  other  folks'  eyes,  you  know  —  seem  to  be 
having  anything  to  do  with  me  when  —  when  you  don't 
want  to." 

"  When  I  don't  want  to  !  "  Esther  repeated.  There  was 
musing  in  the  soft  voice,  a  kind  of  wonder. 

"  It's  an  infernal  shame,"  said  Jeff.  He  was  glad  to 
tell  her  he  hated  the  privation  she  had  to  bear  of  having 
cast  him  off  and  yet  facing  her  broken  life  without  him. 
"  I  know  what  kind  of  time  you  have  as  well  as  you  could 
tell  me.  You've  got  Madame  Beattie  quartered  on  you. 
There's  grandmother  upstairs.  No  comfort  in  her.  No 
companionship.  I've  often  thought  you  don't  go  out  as 
much  as  you  might  for  fear  of  meeting  me.  You  needn't 


390  THE  PRISONER 

feel  that.  If  I  see  it's  going  to  happen  I  can  save  you 
that,  at  least." 

Esther  stood  looking  up  at  him,  her  lips  parted,  as  if 
she  drank  what  he  had  to  say  through  them,  and  drank  it 
thirstily. 

"  How  good  you  are !  "  she  said.  "  O  Jeff,  how  good ! 
When  I've — "  There  she  paused,  still  watching  him. 
But  Esther  had  the  woman's  instinctive  trick  of  being 
able  to  watch  accurately  while  she  did  it  passionately. 

Jeff  flushed  to  his  hair,  but  her  cleverness  did  not  lead 
her  to  the  springs  of  his  emotion.  He  was  ashamed,  not 
of  her,  but  of  himself. 

"  You're  off,"  he  said,  "  all  wrong.  I  do  want  to 
save  you  from  this  horrible  mix-up  I've  made  for  you. 
But  I'm  not  good,  Esther.  I'm  not  the  faithful  chap  it 
makes  me  seem.  I'm  different.  You  wouldn't  know  me. 
I  don't  believe  we  ever  knew  each  other  very  well." 

Something  like  terror  came  into  her  beautiful  eyes. 
Was  he,  that  inner  terror  asked  her,  trying  to  explain 
that  she  had  lost  him?  Although  she  might  not  want  him, 
she  had  always  thought  he  would  be  there. 

"  You  mean  — "  she  began,  and  strove  to  keep  a  grip 
on  herself  and  decide  temperately  whether  this  would  be 
best  to  say.  But  some  galled  feeling  got  the  better  of 
her.  The  smart  was  too  much.  Hurt  vanity  made  her 
wince  and  cry  out  with  the  passion  of  a  normal  jealousy. 
"  You  mean,"  she  continued,  "  you  are  in  love  with  another 
woman." 

It  was  a  hit.  He  had  deserved  it,  he  knew,  and  he 
straightened  under  it.  Let  him  not,  his  alarmed  senses 
told  him,  even  think  of  Lydia,  lest  these  cruelly  clever  eyes 
see  Lydia  in  his,  Lydia  in  his  hurried  breath,  even  if  he 
could  keep  Lydia  from  his  tongue. 

"  Esther,"  he  said,  "  don't  say   such  a  thing.     Don't 


THE  PRISONER  391 

think  it.  What  right  have  I  to  look  at  another  woman 
while  you  are  alive?  How  could  I  insult  a  woman — " 
He  stopped,  his  own  honest  heart  knocking  against  his 
words.  He  had  dared.  He  had  swept  his  house  of  life 
and  let  Lydia  in. 

"  Yes,"  said  Esther  thoughtfully,  and,  it  seemed,  hurt 
to  the  soul,  "  you  love  somebody  else.  0  Jeff,  I  didn't 
think  — "  She  lifted  widened  eyes  to  his.  Afterward  he 
could  have  sworn  they  were  wet  with  tears.  "  I  stand  in 
your  way,  don't  I?  What  can  I  do,  not  to  stand  in  your 
way?" 

"  Do  ?  "  said  Jeff,  in  a  rage  at  all  the  passions  between 
men  and  women.  "  Do  ?  You  can  stop  talking  senti 
ment  about  me  and  putting  words  into  my  mouth.  You  can 
make  over  your  life,  if  you  know  how,  and  I'll  help  you  do 
it,  if  I  can.  I  thought  you  were  trying  to  free  yourself. 
You  can  do  that.  I  won't  lift  a  hand.  You  can  say 
you're  afraid  of  me,  as  you  have  before.  God  knows 
whether  you  are.  If  you  are,  you're  out  of  your  mind. 
But  you  can  say  it,  and  I  won't  deny  you've  just  cause. 
You  mustn't  be  a  prisoner  to  me." 

"Jeff!"  said  Esther. 

"What  is  it?  "he  asked. 

She  spoke  tremblingly,  weakly  really  as  if  she  had  not 
the  strength  to  speak,  and  he  came  a  step  nearer  and 
laid  his  hand  on  the  granite  gatepost.  It  was  so  hard  it 
gave  him  courage.  There  were  blood-red  vines  on  it,  and 
when  he  disturbed  their  stems  they  loosened  leaves  and  let 
them  drift  over  his  hand. 

"  Now  I  see,"  said  Esther,  "  how  really  alone  I  am.  I 
thought  I  was  when  you  were  away,  but  it  was  nothing  to 
this." 

She  walked  on,  listlessly,  aimlessly  even  though  she 
kept  the  path  and  she  was  going  on  her  way  as  she  had 


392  THE  PRISONER 

elected  to  before  she  saw  him.  But  to  Jeff  she  seemed 
to  be  a  drifting  thing.  A  delicate  butterfly  floated  past 
him,  weakened  by  the  coldness  of  last  night  and  fluttering 
on  into  a  night  as  cold. 

"  Esther,"  he  called,  and  hurried  after  her.  "  You 
don't  want  me  to  walk  with  you  ?  "  he  asked  impatiently. 
"  You  don't  want  Addington  to  say  we've  made  it  up  ?  " 

"I  don't  care  about  Addington,"  said  Esther.  "It 
can  say  what  it  pleases  —  if  you're  kind  to  me." 

"  Kind !  "  said  Jeff.  "  I  could  have  you  trounced. 
You  don't  play  fair.  What  do  you  mean  by  mixing  me 
all  up  with  pity  and  things  — "  Esther's  lids  were  not 
allowed  to  lift,  but  her  heart  gave  a  little  responsive 
bound.  So  she  had  mixed  him  up  !  —  "  Getting  the  facts 
all  wrong,"  Jeff  went  on  irritably.  "  You  ignore  every 
thing  you've  felt  before  to-day.  And  you  begin  to-day 
and  say  I've  not  been  kind  to  you." 

Now  Esther  looked  at  him.     She  smiled. 

"  Scold  away,"  she  said.  "  I've  wanted  you  to  scold 
me.  I  haven't  been  so  happy  for  months." 

"  Of  course  I  scold  you,"  said  Jeff.  "  I  want  to  see  you 
happy.  I  want  to  see  you  rid  of  me  and  beginning  your 
life  all  over,  so  far  as  you  can.  You're  not  the  sort  to 
live  alone.  It's  an  outrage  against  nature.  A  woman 
like  you  — " 

But  Esther  never  discovered  what  he  meant  by  "  a 
woman  like  you."  He  had  gone  a  little  further  than  her 
brain  would  take  her.  Did  he  mean  a  woman  altogether 
charming,  like  her  —  or  ?  She  dropped  the  inquiry  very 
soon,  because  it  seemed  to  lead  nowhere  and  it  was  pleas- 
anter  to  think  the  things  that  do  not  worry  one. 

Jeff  remembered  afterward  that  he  had  known  from  the 
beginning  of  the  walk  with  her  that  they  should  meet  all 
Addington.  But  it  was  not  the  Addington  he  had  irri- 


THE  PRISONER  393 

tably  dreaded.  It  was  Lydia.  His  heart  died  as  he  saw 
her  coming,  and  his  brain  called  on  every  reserve  within 
him  to  keep  Esther  from  knowing  that  here  was  his  heart's 
lady,  this  brave  creature  whose  honour  was  untainted,  who 
had  a  woman's  daring  and  a  man's  endurance.  He  even, 
after  that  first  alarm  of  a  glance,  held  his  eyes  from  see 
ing  her  and  he  kept  on  scolding  Esther. 

"  What's  the  use,"  he  said,  «  talking  like  that?  "  And 
then  his  mind  told  him  there  must  be  no  confusion  in  what 
he  said.  He  was  defending  Lydia.  He  was  pulling  over 
her  the  green  leaves  of  secrecy.  "  I  advise  you,"  he  said, 
"  to  get  away  from  here.  Get  away  from  Madame 
Bcattie  —  get  away  from  grandmother  —  "  Lydia  was 
very  near  now.  He  felt  he  could  afford  to  see  her.  "  Ah, 
Lydia !  "  he  said  casually,  and  took  off  his  hat. 

They  were  past  her,  but  not  before  Esther  had  asked, 
in  answer: 

"  Where  shall  we  go  ?  I  mean  — "  she  caught  herself 
up  from  her  wilful  stumbling  —  "  where  could  I  go  — 
alone?" 

They  were  at  her  own  gate,  and  Jeff  stopped  with  her. 
Since  they  left  Lydia  he  had  held  his  hat  in  his  hand, 
and  Esther,  looking  up  at  him  saw  that  he  had  paled 
under  his  tan.  The  merciless  woman  in  her  took  stock 
of  that,  rejoicing.  Jeff  smiled  at  her  faintly,  he  was  so 
infinitely  glad  to  leave  her. 

"We  must  think,"  he  said.  "You  must  think.  Es 
ther,  about  money,  I'll  try  —  I  don't  know  yet  what  I 
can  earn  —  but  we'll  see.  Oh,  hang  it !  these  things  can't 
be  said." 

He  turned  upon  the  words  and  strode  off  and  Esther, 
without  looking  after  him,  went  in  and  at  once  upstairs. 

"  Good  girl !  "  Madame  Beattie  called  to  her,  from  her 
room.  "  Well  begun  is  half  done," 


394  THE  PRISONER 

Esther  did  not  answer.  Neither  did  she  take  the  trouble 
to  hate  Aunt  Patricia  for  saying  it.  She  went  instantly 
to  her  glass,  and  smiled  into  it.  The  person  who  smiled 
back  at  her  was  young  and  very  engaging.  Esther  liked 
her.  She  thought  she  could  trust  her  to  do  the  best 
thing  possible. 

Jeff  went  home  and  stood  just  inside  his  gateway  to 
wait  for  Lydia.  He  judged  that  she  had  been  going  to 
Amabel's,  and  now,  her  thoughts  thrown  out  of  focus 
by  meeting  him  with  Esther,  she  would  give  up  her  visit 
and  come  home  to  be  sad  a  little  by  herself.  He  was  right. 
She  came  soon,  walking  fast,  after  her  habit,  a  determined 
figure.  He  had  had  time  to  read  her  face  before  she  drew 
its  veil  of  proud  composure,  and  he  found  in  it  what  he 
had  expected:  young  sorrow,  the  anguish  of  the  heart 
stricken  and  with  no  acquired  power  of  staunching  its  own 
wounds.  When  she  saw  him  her  face  hardly  changed, 
except  that  the  mournful  eyes  sought  his.  Had  Esther 
got  power  over  him?  the  eyes  asked,  and  not  out  of  jeal 
ousy,  he  believed.  The  little  creature  was  like  a  cherish 
ing  mother.  If  Esther  had  gained  power  she  would  fight 
it  to  the  uttermost,  not  to  possess  him  but  to  save  his 
intimate  self.  Esther  might  pursue  it  into  fastnesses, 
but  it  should  be  saved.  To  Jeff,  in  that  instant  of  meeting 
the  questioning  eyes,  she  seemed  an  amazing  person,  ca 
pable  of  exacting  a  tremendous  loyalty.  He  didn't  feel 
like  explaining  to  her  that  Esther  hadn't  got  him  in  the 
least.  The  clarity  of  understanding  between  them  was 
inexpressibly  precious  to  him.  He  wouldn't  break  it  by 
muddling  assertions. 

"  I've  been  to  Amabel's,"  he  said.  "  You  were  going 
there,  too,  weren't  you?  " 

Lydia's  face  relaxed  and  cleared  a  little.  She  looked 
relieved,  perhaps  from  the  mere  kindness  of  his  voice. 


THE  PRISONER  395 

«  I  didn't  go,"  she  said.     "  I  didn't  feel  like  it." 

"  No,"  said  Jeff.  "  But  now  we're  home  again,  both 
of  us,  and  we're  glad.  Couldn't  we  cut  round  this  way 
and  sit  under  the  wall  a  little  before  Anne  sees  us  and 
makes  us  eat  things?  " 

He  took  her  hand,  this  time  of  intention  to  make  her 
feel  befriended  in  the  intimacy  of  their  common  home,  and 
they  skirted  the  fence  and  went  across  the  orchard  to  the 
bench  by  the  brick  wall.  As  they  sat  there  and  Jeff  gave 
back  her  little  hand  he  suddenly  heard  quick  breaths  from 
her  and  then  a  sob  or  two. 

"Lydia,"  said  he.     "  Lydia." 

"  I  know  it,"  said  Lydia. 

She  sought  out  her  handkerchief  and  seemed  to  attack 
her  face  with  it,  she  was  so  angry  at  the  tears. 

"You're  not  hurt,"  said  Jeff.  "Truly  you're  not 
hurt,  Lydia.  There's  been  nothing  to  hurt  you." 

Soon  her  breath  stopped  catching,  and  she  gave  her  eyes 
a  final  desperate  scrub.  By  that  time  Jeff  had  begun  to 
talk  about  the  land  and  what  he  hoped  to  do  with  it  next 
year.  He  meant  at  le*st  to  prune  the  orchard  and  maybe 
set  out  dwarfs.  At  first  Lydia  did  not  half  listen,  know 
ing  his  purpose  in  distracting  her.  Then  she  began  to 
answer.  Once  she  laughed  when  he  told  her  the  colonel, 
in  learning  to  dig  potatoes,  had  sliced  them  with  the  hoe. 
Father,  he  told  her,  was  what  might  be  called  a  library 
agriculturist.  He  was  reading  agricultural  papers  now. 
He  could  answer  almost  any  question  you  asked.  As  for 
bugs  and  their  natural  antidotes,  he  knew  them  like  a 
book.  He  even  called  himself  an  agronomist.  But  when 
it  came  to  potatoes!  By  and  by  they  were  talking  to 
gether  and  he  had  succeeded  in  giving  her  that  homely 
sense  of  intimacy  he  had  been  striving  for.  She  forgot 
the  pang  that  pierced  her  when  she  saw  him  walking  be- 


396  THE  PRISONER 

side  the  woman  who  owned  him  through  the  law.  He  was 
theirs,  hers  and  her  father's  and  Anne's,  because  they 
knew  him  as  he  was  and  were  desperately  seeking  to  suc 
cour  his  maimed  life. 

But  as  she  was  going  to  sleep  a  curious  question  asked 
itself  of  Lydia.  Didn't  she  want  him  to  go  back  to  his 
wife  and  be  happy  with  her,  if  that  could  be?  Lydia  had 
no  secrets  from  herself,  no  emotional  veilings.  She  told 
herself  at  once  that  she  didn't  want  it  at  all.  No  Esther 
made  good  as  she  was  fair,  by  some  apt  miracle,  could 
be  trusted  with  the  man  she  had  hurt.  According  to 
Lydia,  Esther  had  not  in  her  even  the  seeds  of  such  com 
passion  as  Jeff  deserved. 


XXXV 

When  the  cold  weather  came  and  Alston  Choate  and 
Weedon  Moore  became  rival  candidates  for  the  mayoralty 
of  Addington,  strange  things  began  to  happen.  Choate, 
cursing  his  lot  inwardly,  but  outwardly  deferential  to  his 
mother  who  had  really  brought  it  on  him,  began  to  fulfil 
every  last  requirement  of  the  zealous  candidate.  He  even 
learned  to  make  speeches,  not  the  lucid  exponents  of  the 
law  that  belonged  to  his  court  career,  but  prompt  ad 
dresses,  apparently  unconsidered,  at  short  notice.  The 
one  innovation  he  drew  the  line  at  was  the  flattering  recog 
nition  of  men  he  had  never,  in  the  beaten  way  of  life,  rec 
ognised  before.  He  could  not,  he  said,  kiss  babies.  But 
he  would  tell  the  town  what  he  thought  it  needed,  coached, 
he  ironically  added  when  he  spoke  the  expansive  truth  at 
home,  by  his  mother  and  Jeff.  They  were  ready  to  bring 
kindling  to  boil  the  pot,  Mrs.  Choate  in  her  grand  man 
ner  of  beckoning  the  ancient  virtues  back,  Jeff,  as  Alston 
told,  him,  hammer  and  tongs.  Jeff  also  began  to  make 
speeches,  because,  at  one  juncture  when  Alston  gave  out 
from  hoarseness  —  his  mother  said  it  was  a  psychological 
hoarseness  at  a  moment  when  he  realised  overwhelmingly 
how  he  hated  it  all  —  Jeff  had  taken  his  place  and  "  got  " 
the  men,  labourers  all  of  them,  as  Alston  never  had. 

"  It's  a  mistake,"  said  Mrs.  Choate  afterward  when  he 
came  to  the  house  to  report,  and  ask  how  Alston  was, 
and  the  three  sat  eating  one  of  Mary's  quick  suppers. 
"You're  really  the  candidate.  Those  men  know  it. 
They  know  it's  you  behind  Alston,  and  they're  going  to 

397 


398  THE  PRISONER 

take  him  patiently  because  you  tell  them  to.  But  they 
don't  half  want  him." 

Jeff  was  very  fine  now  in  his  robustness,  fit  and  strong, 
no  fat  on  him  and  good  blood  racing  well.  He  was  eating 
bread  and  butter  heartily,  while  he  waited  for  Mary  to 
serve  him  savoury  things,  and  Mrs.  Choate  looked  dis 
contentedly  at  Mary  bending  over  his  plate,  all  hospital 
ity,  with  the  greater  solicitude  because  he  was  helping 
Alston  out.  Mrs.  Choate  wished  the  nugatory  Esther 
were  out  of  the  way,  and  she  could  marry  Mary  off  to  Jeff. 
Mary,  pale,  yet  wholesome,  fair-haired,  with  the  definite 
Choate  profile,  and  dressed  in  her  favourite  smoke  colour 
and  pale  violet,  her  mother  loved  conscientiously,  if  im 
patiently.  But  she  wished  Mary,  who  had  not  one  errant 
inclination,  might  come  to  her  some  day  and  say,  "  Mother, 
I  am  desperately  enamoured  of  an  Italian  fruit-seller  with 
Italy  in  his  eyes."  Mrs.  Choate  would  have  explained  to 
her,  with  a  masterly  common-sense,  that  such  vagrom  im- 
i  pulses  meant,  followed  to  conclusions,  shipwreck  on  the 
rocks  of  class  misunderstanding;  but  it  would  have 
warmed  her  heart  to  Mary  to  have  so  to  explain.  But 
here  was  Mary  to  whom  no  eccentricity  ever  had  to  be 
elucidated.  She  could  not  even  have  imagined  a  fruit- 
seller  outside  his  heaven-decreed  occupation  of  selling 
fruit.  Mrs.  Choate  smiled  a  little  to  herself,  wondering 
what  Mary  would  say  if  she  could  know  her  mother  was 
willing  to  consign  the  inconvenient  Esther  to  perpetual 
limbo  and  marry  her  to  handsome  Jeff.  "  Mother !  "  she 
could  imagine  her  horrified  cry.  It  would  all  be  in  that. 

Jeff  was  more  interested  in  his  eating  than  in  answering 
Mrs.  Choate  with  more  than  an  encouraging : 

"  We've  got  'em,  I  think.  But  I  wish,"  he  said,  "  we 
had  more  time  to  follow  up  Weedie.  What's  he  saying 
to  'em?" 


THE  PRISONER  399 

"  Ask  Madame  Beattie,"  said  Alston,  with  more  distaste 
than  he  could  keep  out  of  his  voice.  "  I  saw  her  last 
night  on  the  outskirts  of  his  crowd,  sitting  in  Denny's 
hack." 

"  Speaking?  "  asked  Jeff.  "  She'd  have  spoken,  if  she 
got  half  a  chance." 

Alston  laughed  quietly. 

"  Moore  got  the  better  of  her.  He  was  in  his  car.  All 
he  had  to  do  was  to  make  off.  She  made  after  him, 
but  he's  got  the  whip-hand,  with  a  car." 

The  next  night,  doubtless  taught  the  advisability  of 
vying  with  her  enemy,  Madame  Beattie,  to  the  disgust  of 
Esther,  came  down  cloaked  and  muffled  to  the  chin  and 
took  the  one  automobile  to  be  had  for  hire  in  Addington. 
She  was  whirled  away,  where  Esther  had  no  idea.  She  was 
whirled  back  again  at  something  after  ten,  hoarse  yet  im 
mensely  tickled.  But  Reardon  knew  what  she  had  done 
and  he  telephoned  it  to  Esther.  She  was  making  speeches 
of  her  own,  stopping  at  street  corners  wherever  she  could 
gather  a  group,  but  especially  running  down  to  the  little 
streets  by  the  water  where  the  foreign  labourers  came 
swarming  out  and  cheered  her. 

"  It's  disgraceful,"  said  Esther,  almost  crying  into  the 
telephone.  "  What  is  she  saying  to  them?  " 

"  Nobody  knows,  except  it's  political.  We  assume 
that,"  said  Reardon.  "  All  kinds  of  lingo.  They 
tell  me  she  knows  more  languages  than  a  college  profes 
sor." 

"Find  out,"  Esther  besought  him.  "Ask  her.  Ask 
whom  you  shall  vote  for.  It'll  get  her  started." 

That  seemed  to  Iteardon  a  valuable  idea,  and  he  ac 
tually  did  ask  her,  lingering  before  the  door  onte  night 
when  she  came  out  to  take  her  car.  He  put  hfer  into  it 
with  a  florid  ctfuifey  she  atfctfpfted  as  htefr  du'e  —  it  was 


400  THE  PRISONER 

the  best,  she  thought,  the  man  had  to  offer  —  and  then 
said  to  her  jocosely: 

"Well,  Madame  Beattie,  who  shall  I  vote  for?" 

Madame  Beattie  looked  at  him  an  instant  with  a  quiz 
zical  comprehension  it  was  too  dark  for  him  to  see. 

"  I  can  tell  whom  you'd  better  not  vote  for,"  she  said. 
"  Don't  vote  for  Esther.  Tell  him  to  go  on." 

Reardon  did  tell  the  man  and  then  stood  there  on  the 
pavement  a  moment,  struck  by  the  certainty  that  he  had 
been  warned.  She  seemed  to  him  to  know  everything. 
She  must  know  he  was  somehow  likely  to  get  into  trouble 
over  Esther.  Reardon  was  bewitched  with  Esther,  but  he 
did  so  want  to  be  safe.  Nevertheless,  led  by  man's  destiny, 
he  walked  up  to  the  door  and  Esther,  as  before,  let  him  in. 
He  thought  it  only  fair  to  tell  her  he  had  found  out  noth 
ing,  and  he  meant,  in  a  confused  way,  to  let  her  see  that 
things  must  be  "  all  right "  between  them.  By  this  he 
meant  that  they  must  both  be  safe.  But  once  within  be 
side  her  perfumed  presence  —  yet  Esther  used  no  vulgar 
helps  to  provoke  the  senses  —  he  forgot  that  he  must  be 
safe,  and  took  her  into  his  arms.  He  had  been  so  certain 
of  his  stability,  after  his  recoil  from  Madame  Beattie,  that 
he  neglected  to  resist  himself.  And  Esther  did  not  help 
him.  She  clung  to  him  and  the  perfume  mounted  to  his 
brain.  What  was  it?  Not,  even  he  knew,  a  cunning  of 
the  toilet ;  only  the  whole  warm  breath  of  her. 

"  Look  here,"  said  Reardon,  shaken,  "  what  we  going 
to  do?" 

"  You  must  tell  me,"  she  whispered.  "  How  could  I 
tell  you?" 

Reardon  afterward  had  an  idea  that  he  broke  into  rough 
beseeching  of  her  to  get  free,  to  take  his  money,  every 
thing  he  had,  and  buy  her  freedom  somehow.  Thfen,  he 
said,  in  an  awkwardriess  he  curs*ed  hims'elf  for,  thfey  c'ould 


THE  PRISONER  401 

begin  to  talk.  And  as  she  withdrew  from  him  at  sound  of 
Rhoda  Knox  above,  he  opened  the  door  and  ran  away 
from  her,  to  the  ordered  seclusion  of  his  own  house.  Once 
there  he  wiped  his  flustered  brow  and  cursed  a  little,  and 
then  telephoned  her.  But  Sophy  answered  that  Mrs. 
Blake  was  not  well.  She  had  gone  to  her  room. 

Reardon  had  a  confused  multitude  of  things  to  say  to 
her.  He  wanted  to  beg  her  to  understand,  to  assure  her 
he  was  thinking  of  her  and  not  himself,  as  indeed  he  was. 
But  meantime  as  he  rehearsed  the  arguments  he  had  at 
hand,  he  was  going  about  the  room  getting  things  to 
gether.  His  papers  were  fairly  in  order.  He  could  al 
ways  shake  them  into  perfect  system  at  an  hour's  notice. 
And  then  muttering  to  himself  that,  after  all,  he  shouldn't 
use  it,  he  telephoned  New  York  to  have  a  state-room 
reservation  made  for  Liverpool.  The  office  was  closed, 
and  he  knew  it  wrould  be,  yet  it  somehow  gave  him  a  dull 
satisfaction  to  have  tried;  and  next  day  he  telephoned 
again. 

Within  a  week  Jeff  turned  his  eyes  toward  a  place  he 
had  never  thought  of,  never  desired  for  a  moment,  and  yet 
now  longed  for  exceedingly.  A  master  in  a  night  school 
founded  by  Miss  Amabel  had  dropped  out,  and  Jeff  went, 
hot  foot,  to  Amabel  and  begged  to  take  his  place.  How 
could  she  refuse  him?  Yet  she  did  warn  him  against 
propaganda. 

"  Jeff,  dear,"  she  said,  moving  a  little  from  the  open 
fire  where  he  sat  with  her,  bolt  upright,  eager,  forceful, 
exactly  like  a  suppliant  for  a  job  he  desperately  needs, 
"  you  won't  use  it  to  set  the  men  against  Weedon  Moore?  " 

Jeff  looked  at  her  with  a  perfectly  open  candour  and 
such  a  force  of  persuasion  in  his  asking  eyes  that  she  be 
lieved  he  was  bringing  his  personal  charm  to  influence  her, 
and  shook  her  head  at  him  despairingly. 


402  THE  PRISONER 

"  I  won't  in  that  building  or  the  school  session,"  he 
said.  "  Outside  I'll  knife  him  if  I  can." 

"  Jeff,"  said  Miss  Amabel,  "  if  you'd  only  work  to 
gether." 

"  We  can't,"  said  Jeff,  "  any  more  than  oil  and  water. 
Or  alkali  and  acid.  We'd  make  a  mighty  fizz.  I'm  in  it 
for  all  I'm  worth,  Amabel.  To  bust  Weedie  and  save 
Addington." 

"  Weedon  Moore  is  saving  Addington,"  said  she. 

"  Do  you  honestly  believe  that  ?  Think  how  Adding 
ton  began.  Do  you  suppose  a  town  that  old  boy  up  there 
helped  to  build —  "  he  glanced  at  his  friend,  the  judge 
—  "  do  you  think  that  little  rat  can  do  much  for  it  ?  I 
don't."  " 

"  Perhaps  Addington  doesn't  need  his  kind  of  help  now, 
or  yours.  Addington  is  perfectly  comfortable,  except  its 
working  class.  And  it's  the  working  man  Weedon  Moore 
is  striving  for." 

"  Addington  is  comfortable  on  a  red-hot  crater,"  said 
Jeff.  "  She's  like  all  the  rest  of  America.  She's  sat  here 
sentimentalising  and  letting  the  crater  get  hotter  and 
hotter  under  her,  and  unless  we  look  out,  Amabel,  there 
isn't  going  to  be  any  America,  one  of  these  days.  Mrs. 
Choate  says  it's  going  to  be  the  spoil  of  damned  German 
efficiency.  She  thinks  the  Huns  are  waking  up  and  civili 
sations  going  under.  But  I  don't.  I  believe  we're  going 
to  be  a  great  unwieldy,  industrial  monster,  no  cohesion  in 
us  and  no  patriotism,  no  citizenship." 

"  No  patriotism !  "  Miss  Amabel  rose  involuntarily 
and  stood  there  trembling.  Her  troubled  eyes  sought  the 
pictured  eyes  of  the  old  Judge.  "  Jeff,  you  don't  know 
what  you're  saying." 

"  I  do,"  said  Jeff,  "  mighty  well.  Sit  down,  dear,  or 
I  shall  have  to  salute  the  flag,  too,  and  I'm  too  lazy." 


THE  PRISONER  403 

She  sat  down,  but  she  was  trembling. 

"  And  I'm  going  to  save  Addington,  if  I  Can,"  said 
Jeff.  "  I  haven't  the  tongue  of  men  and  angels  or  I'd 
go  out  and  try  to  salvage  the  whole  business.  But  I 
can't.  Addington's  more  my  size.  If  there  were  inva 
sion,  you  know,  a  crippled  man  couldn't  do  more  than  try 
to  defend  his  own  dooryard.  Dear  old  girl,  we've  got  to 
save  Addington." 

"  I'm  trying,"  said  she.  "  Jeff,  dear,  I'm  trying.  And 
I've  a  lot  of  money.  I  don't  know  how  it  rolled  up  so." 

"  Don't  give  it  to  Weedon  Moore,  that's  all,"  he  ven 
tured,  and  then,  in  the  stiffening  of  her  whole  body,  he 
saw  it  was  a  mistake  even  to  mention  Moore.  Her  large 
charity  made  her  fiercely  partisan.  He  ventured  the 
audacious  perspnal  appeal.  "  Give  me  some,  Amabel,  if 
you've  really  got  so  much.  Let  me  put  on  some  plays, 
in  a  simple  way,  and  try  to  make  your  workmen  see 
what  we're  at,  when  we  talk  about  home  and  country. 
They  despise  us,  Amabel,  except  on  pay  day.  Let's  hyp 
notise  'em,  please  'em  in  some  other  way  besides  shorter 
hours  and  easier  strikes.  Let's  make  'em  fall  over  them 
selves  to  be  Americans." 

Miss  Amabel  flushed  all  over  her  soft  face,  up  to  the 
line  of  her  grey  hair. 

"  Jeff,"  she  said. 

"What'm?" 

"  I  have  always  meant  when  you  were  at  liberty  again 
— "  that  seemed  to  her  a  tolerable  euphemism  — "  to 
turn  in  something  toward  your  debt." 

"  To  the  creditors  ?  "  Jeff  supplied  cheerfully.  "  Ama 
bel,  dear,  I  don't  believe  there  are  any  little  people  suf 
fering  from  my  thievery.  It's  only  the  big  people  that 
wanted  to  be  as  rich  as  I  did.  Anne  and  Lydia  are  suf 
fering  in  a  way.  But  that's  my  business.  I'm  going  to 


404  THE  PRISONER 

confess  to  you.     Dear  sister  superior,  I'm  going  to  con 
fess." 

She  did  not  move,  hardly  by  an  eyelash.  She  was  afraid 
of  choking  his  confidence,  and  she  wanted  it  to  come  abun 
dantly.  Jeff  sat  for  a  minute  or  two  frowning  and  staring 
into  the  fire.  He  had  to  catch  himself  back  from  what 
threatened  to  become  silent  reverie. 

"  I've  thought  a  good  deal  about  this,"  he  said,  "  when 
I've  had  time  to  think,  these  last  weeks.  I'd  give  a  lot 
to  stand  clear  with  the  world.  I'd  like  to  do  a  spectacular 
refunding  of  what  I  stole  and  lost.  But  I'd  far  rather 
pitch  in  and  save  Addington.  Maybe  it  means  I'm  warped 
somehow  about  money,  standards  lowered,  you  know,  per 
ceptions  blunted,  that  sort  of  thing.  Well,  if  it's  so  I 
shall  find  it  out  sometime  and  be  punished.  We  can't  es 
cape  anything,  in  spite  of  their  doctrine  of  vicarious 
atonement." 

She  moved  slightly  at  this,  and  Jeff  smiled  at  her. 

"  Yes,"  said  he,  "  we  have  to  be  punished.  Sometimes 
I  suppose  the  full  knowledge  of  what  we've  done  is  pun 
ishment  enough.  Now  about  me.  If  anybody  came  to 
me  to-day  and  said,  '  I'll  make  you  square  with  the  world,' 
I  should  say,  '  Don't  you  do  it.  Save  Addington.  I'd 
rather  throw  my  good  name  into  the  hopper  and  let  it 
grind  out  grist  for  Addington.' ' 

Miss  Amabel  put  out  the  motherly  hand  and  he  grasped 
it. 

"  And  I  assure  you,"  he  said  again,  "  I  don't  know 
whether  that's  common-sense  —  tossing  the  rotten  past 
into  the  abyss  and  making  a  new  deal  —  or  whether  it's 
because  I've  deteriorated  too  much  to  see  I've  deteriorated. 
You  tell,  Amabel." 

She  took  out  her  large  handkerchief  —  Amabel  had  a 
convenient  pocket  —  and  openly  wiped  her  eyes. 


THE  PRISONER  405 

"  I'll  give  you  money,  Jeff,"  she  said,  "  and  you  can  put 
it  into  plays.  I'd  like  to  pay  you  something  definite 
for  doing  it,  because  I  don't  see  how  you're  going  to 
live." 

"  Lydia'll  help  me  do  it,"  said  Jeff,  "  she  and  Anne. 
They're  curiously  wise  about  plays  and  dances.  No, 
Amabel,  I  sha'n't  eat  your  money,  except  what  you  pay 
me  for  evening  school.  And  I  have  an  idea  I'm  going  to 
get  on.  I  always  had  the  devil's  own  luck  about  things, 
you  know.  Look  at  the  luck  of  getting  you  to  fork  out 
for  plays  you've  never  heard  the  mention  of.  And  I  feel 
terrible  loquacious.  I  think  I  shall  write  things.  I  think 
folks'll  take  'em.  They've  got  to.  I  want  to  hand  over 
a  little  more  to  Esther." 

Even  to  her  he  had  never  mentioned  the  practical  side 
of  Esther's  life.  Miss  Amabel  looked  at  him  sympatheti 
cally,  inquiringly. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  "  she's  having  a  devil  of  a  time.  I  want 
to  ease  it  up  somehow  —  send  her  abroad  or  let  her  get 
a  divorce  or  something." 

"  You  couldn't  —  "  said  Amabel.     She  stopped. 

His  brows  were  black  as  thunder. 

"  No,"  said  he,  "  no.  Esther  and  I  are  as  far  apart 
as  —  "  he  paused  for  a  simile.  Then  he  smiled  at  her. 
"  No,"  he  said.  "  It  wouldn't  do." 

As  he  went  out  he  stopped  a  moment  more  and  smiled  at 
her  with  the  deprecating  air  of  asking  for  indulgence  that 
was  his  charm  when  he  was  good.  His  eyes  were  the  soft 
bright  blue  of  happy  seas. 

"  Amabel,"  said  he,  "  I  don't  want  to  cry  for  mercy, 
though  I'd  rather  have  mercy  from  you  than  'most  any 
body.  Blame  me  if  you've  got  to,  but  don't  make  any 
mistake  about  me.  I'm  not  good  and  I'm  not  all  bad. 
I'm  nothing  but  a  confusion  inside.  I've  got  to  pitch  in 


406  THE  PRISONER 

and  do  the  best  thing  I  know.  I'm  an  undiscovered 
country." 

"  You're  no  mystery  to  me,"  she  said.  "  You're  a  good 
boy,  Jeff." 

He  went  straight  home  and  called  Lydia  and  Anne  to 
council,  the  colonel  sitting  by,  looking  over  his  glasses 
in  a  benevolent  way. 

"  I've  been  trying  to  undermine  Weedie,"  said  Jeff, 
"  with  Amabel.  I  can't  quite  do  it,  but  I've  got  her  to 
promise  me  some  of  her  money.  For  plays,  Lydia,  played 
by  Mill  End.  What  do  you  say?  " 

"  She  hasn't  money  enough  for  real  plays,"  said  Lydia. 
"  All  she's  got  wouldn't  last  a  minute." 

"  Not  in  a  hall?  "  asked  Jeff.  "  Not  with  scenery  just 
sketched  in,  as  it  were?  But  all  of  it  patriotic.  Teach 
them  something.  Ram  it  down  their  throats.  English 
language." 

Lydia  made  a  few  remarks,  and  Jeff  sat  up  and  stared 
at  her.  The  colonel  and  Anne,  endorsing  her,  were  not 
surprised.  They  had  heard  it  all  before.  It  seems  Lydia 
had  a  theory  that  the  province  of  art  is  simply  not  to  be 
dull.  If  you  could  charm  people,  you  could  make  them 
do  anything.  The  kite  of  your  aspirations  might  fly 
among  the  stars.  But  you  couldn't  fly  it  if  it  didn't  look 
well  flying.  The  reason  nobody  really  learns  anything 
by  plays  intended  to  teach  them  something,  Lydia  said, 
is  because  the  plays  are  generally  dull.  Nobody  is  going 
to  listen  to  "  argufying  "  if  he  can  help  it.  If  you  tell 
people  what  it  is  beneficial  for  them  to  believe  they  are 
going  home  and  to  bed,  unchanged.  But  they'll  yawn  in 
your  faces  first.  Lydia  had  a  theory  that  you  might 
teach  the  most  extraordinary  lessons  if  you  only  made 
them  bewitching  enough.  Look  at  the  Blue  Bird.  How 
many  people  who  loved  to  see  Bread  cut  a  slice  off  his 


THE  PRISONER  407 

stomach  and  to  follow  the  charming  pageant  of  the  glori 
fied  common  things  of  life,  thought  anything  save  that  this 
was  a  "show"  with  no  appeal  beyond  the  visual  one? 
Yet  there  it  was,  the  big  symbolism  beating  in  its  heart 
and  keeping  it  alive.  The  Children  of  Light  could  see 
the  symbolism  quick  as  a  wink.  Still  the  Children  of 
Darkness  who  never  saw  any  symbolism  at  all  and  who 
were  the  ones  to  yawn  and  go  home  to  bed,  helped  pay  for 
tickets  and  keep  the  thing  running.  We  must  bewitch 
them  also.  Jeff  inquired  humbly  if  she  would  advise  tak 
ing  up  Shakespeare  with  the  Mill  Enders  and  found  she 
still  wouldn't  venture  on  it  at  once.  She'd  do  some  fairy 
plays,  quite  easy  to  write  on  new  lines.  Everything  was 
easy  if  you  had  "  go  "  enough,  Lydia  said.  Jeff  ventured 
to  inquire  about  scenic  effects,  and  discovered,  to  his  en 
lightenment,  that  Lydia  had  the  greatest  faith  in  the  im 
agination  of  any  kind  of  audience.  Do  a  thing  well 
enough,  she  said,  and  the  audience  would  forget  whether 
it  was  looking  at  a  painted  scene  or  not.  It  could  pro 
vide  its  own  illusion.  Think  of  the  players,  she  reminded 
him,  who,  when  they  gave  the  Trojan  Women  on  the  road, 
and  sought  for  a  little  Astyanax,  were  forbidden  by  an 
asinine  city  government  to  bring  on  a  real  child.  Think 
how  the  actors  crouched  protectingly  over  an  imaginary 
Astyanax,  and  how  plainly  every  eye  saw  the  child  who 
was  not  there.  Perhaps  every  woman's  heart  supplied  the 
vision  of  her  dream-child,  of  the  child  she  loved.  Think 
of  the  other  play  where  the  kettle  is  said  to  be  hissing 
hot  and  everybody  shuns  it  with  such  care  that  on 
lookers  wince  too.  Lydia  thought  she  could  write  the 
fairy  plays  and  the  symbolic  plays,  all  American,  if  Jeff 
liked,  and  he  might  correct  the  grammar. 

Just  then  Mary  Nellen,  passionately  but  silently  grieved 
to  have  lost  such  an  intellectual  feast,  came  in  on  the  tail 


408  THE  PRISONER 

of  these  remarks.  She  brought  Jeff  a  letter.  It  was  a 
publisher's  letter,  and  the  publisher  would  print  his  book 
about  prisoners.  It  said  nothing  whatever  of  trying  to 
advertise  him  as  a  prisoner.  Jeff  concluded  the  man 
was  a  decent  fellow.  He  swaggered  a  little  over  the  letter 
and  told  the  family  he  had  to,  it  was  such  luck. 

They  were  immensely  proud  and  excited  at  once.  The 
colonel  called  him  "  son  "  with  emphasis,  and  Lydia  got 
up  and  danced  a  little  by  herself.  She  invited  Anne  to 
join  her,  but  Anne  sat,  soft-eyed  and  still,  and  was  glad 
that  way.  Jeff  thought  it  an  excellent  moment  to  tell 
them  he  was  going  to  teach  in  the  evening  school,  upon 
which  Lydia  stopped  dancing. 

"  But  I  want  to,"  he  said  to  her,  with  a  smile  for  her 
alone.  "  Won't  you  let  me  if  I  want  to  ?  " 

"  I  want  you  to  write,"  said  Lydia  obstinately. 

"I  shall.  I  shall  write.  And  talk.  It's  a  talking 
age.  Everybody's  chattering,  except  the  ones  that  are 
shrieking.  I'm  going  to  see  if  I  can't  down  some  of  the 
rest." 


XXXVI 

A  carnival  of  motor  cars  kept  on  whirling  to  all  parts 
of  the  town  where  Madame  Beattie  was  likely  to  speak. 
She  spoke  in  strange  places :  at  street  corners,  in  a  freight 
station,  at  the  passenger  station  when  the  incoming  train 
had  brought  a  squad  of  workmen  from  the  bridge  repair 
ing  up  the  track.  It  was  always  to  workmen,  and  always 
they  knew,  by  some  effective  communication,  where  to  as 
semble.  The  leisure  class,  too,  old  Addingtonians,  fol 
lowed  her,  as  if  it  were  all  the  best  of  jokes,  and  protested 
they  sometimes  understood  what  she  said.  But  nobody 
did,  except  the  foreigners  and  not  one  of  them  would  own 
to  knowing.  Weedon  Moore  made  little  clipped  bits  of 
speeches,  sliced  off  whenever  her  car  appeared  and  his 
audience  turned  to  her  in  a  perfect  obedience  and  glowing 
interest.  Jeff,  speaking  for  Alston,  now  got  a  lukewarm 
attention,  the  courtesy  born  out  of  affectionate  regard. 
None  of  the  roars  and  wild  handclappings  were  for  him. 
Madame  Beattie  was  eating  up  all  the  enthusiasm  in  town. 
Once  Jeff,  walking  along  the  street,  came  on  her  standing 
in  her  car,  haranguing  a  group  of  workmen,  all  intent, 
eager,  warm  to  her  with  a  perfect  sympathy  and  even  a 
species  of  adoration. 

He  stepped  up  in  the  car  beside  her.  He  had  an  irri 
tated  sense  that,  if  he  got  near  enough,  he  might  find 
himself  inside  the  mystic  ring.  She  turned  to  him  with 
a  gracious  and  dramatic  courtesy.  She  even  put  a  hand 
on  his  arm,  and  he  realised,  with  more  exasperation,  that 
he  was  supporting  her  while  she  talked.  The  crowd 
cheered,  and,  it  appeared,  they  were  cheering  him. 

409 


410  THE  PRISONER 

"  What  are  you  saying?  "  he  asked  her,  in  an  irascible 
undertone.  "  Talk  English  for  ten  minutes.  Play  fair." 

But  she  only  smiled  on  him  the  more  sympathetically, 
and  the  crowd  cheered  them  both  anew.  Jeff  stuck  by, 
that  night.  He  stayed  with  her  until,  earlier  than  usual 
because  she  had  tired  her  voice,  she  told  the  man  to  drive 
home. 

"  I  am  taking  you  with  me  to  see  Esther,"  she  men 
tioned  unconcernedly,  as  they  went. 

"  No,  you're  not,"  said  Jeff.  "  I'm  not  going  into  that 
house." 

"  Very  well,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "  Then  tell  him 
to  stop  here  a  minute,  while  we  talk." 

Jeff  hesitated,  having  no  desire  to  talk,  and  she  her 
self  gave  the  order. 

"  Poor  Esther !  "  said  Jeff,  when  the  chauffeur  had  ab 
sented  himself  to  a  sufficient  distance,  and,  according  to 
Madame  Beattie's  direction,  was  walking  up  and  down. 
"  Isn't  it  enough  for  you  to  pester  her  without  bringing 
me  into  it?  Why  are  you  so  hard  on  her?  " 

"  I've  been  quite  patient,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  "  with 
both  of  you.  I've  sat  down  and  waited  for  you  to  make 
up  your  minds  what  is  going  to  be  done  about  my  necklace. 
You're  doing  nothing.  Esther's  doing  nothing.  The 
little  imp  that  took  it  out  of  Esther's  bag  is  doing  noth 
ing.  I've  got  to  be  paid,  among  you.  If  I  am  not  paid, 
the  little  dirty  man  is  going  to  have  the  whole  story  to 
publish :  how  Esther  took  the  necklace,  years  ago,  how  the 
little  imp  took  it,  and  how  you  said  you  took  it,  to  save 
her." 

"  I  have  told  Weedon  Moore,"  said  Jeff  succinctly,  "  in 
one  form  or  another  that  I'll  brteak  his  netk  if  he  touches 
the  dirty  job." 

"You  have?"  said  Madame  Beattie.     She  breathed  a 


THE  PRISONER  411 

dramatic  breath,  whether  of  outraged  pride  or  for  calcu 
lated  effect  he  could  not  tell.  "  Jeff,  I  can  assure  you 
if  the  little  man  refuses  to  do  it  —  and  I  doubt  whether 
he  will  —  I'll  have  it  set  up  myself  in  leaflets,  and  I'll  go 
through  the  town  distributing  them  from  this  car.  Jeff, 
I  must  have  money.  I  must  have  it." 

He  sat  back  immovable,  arms  folded,  eyes  on  the  dis 
tance,  and  frowningly  thought.  What  use  to  blame  her 
who  acted  after  her  kind  and  was  no  more  to  be  stirred 
by  appeals  than  a  wild  creature  red-clawed  upon  its  prey? 

"  Madame  Beattie,"  said  he,  "  if  I  had  money  you  should 
have  it.  Right  or  wrong  you  should  have  it  if  it  would 
buy  you  out  of  here.  But  I  haven't  got  it." 

"  It's  there  you  are  a  fool,"  she  said,  moved  actually 
now  by  his  numbness  to  his  own  endowment.  "  I  could 
beat  my  head  and  scream,  when  I  think  how  you're  throw 
ing  things  away,  your  time,  in  that  beastly  night  school, 
your  power,  your  personal  charm.  Jeff,  you've  the  devil's 
own  luck.  You  were  born  with  it.  And  you  simply  won't 
use  it." 

He  had  said  that  himself  in  a  moment  of  hope  not  long 
before:  that  he  had  the  devil's  own  luck.  But  he  wasn't 
going  to  accept  it  from  her. 

"You  talk  of  luck,"  he  said,  "to  a  man  just  out  of 
jail." 

"You  needn't  have  been  in  jail,"  she  was  hurling  at 
him  in  an  unpleasant  intensity  of  tone,  as  if  she  would 
have  liked  to  scream  it  and  the  quiet  street  denied 
her.  "  If  you  hadn't  pleaded  guilty,  if  you  hadn't  handed 
over  every  scrap  of  evidence,  if  you  had  been  willing  to 
take  advantage  of  what  that  clerk  was  ready  to  swear  — 
why,  you  might  have  got  off  and  kept  on  in  business  and 
be  a  millionaire  to-day." 

How  she  managed  to  know  some  of  the  things  she  did 


THE  PRISONER 

he  never  fathomed.  He  had  never  seen  anybody  of  the 
direct  and  shameless  methods  of  Madame  Beattie,  willing 
to  ask  the  most  intimate  questions,  make  the  most  un 
scrupulous  demands.  He  remembered  the  young  clerk  who 
had  wanted  to  perjure  himself  for  his  sake. 

"  That  would  have  made  a  difference,  I  suppose,"  he 
said,  4<  young  Williams'  testimony.  I  wonder  how  he  hap 
pened  to  think  of  it." 

"  He  thought  of  it  because  I  went  to  him,"  said  Madame 
Beattie.  "  I  said,  '  Isn't  there  anything  you  could  swear 
to  that  would  help  him?  '  He  knew  at  once.  He  turned 
white  as  a  sheet.  '  Yes,'  he  said,  '  and  I'll  swear  to  it.' 
I  told  him  we'd  make  it  worth  his  while." 

"You  did?"  said  Jeff.  "Well,  there's  another  illu 
sion  gone.  I  took  a  little  comfort  in  young  Williams.  I 
thought  he  was  willing  to  perjure  himself  because  he  had 
an  affection  for  me.  So  you  were  to  make  it  worth  his 
while." 

She  laughed  a  little,  indifferently,  with  no  bitterness, 
but  in  retrospect  of  a  scene  where  she  had  been  worsted. 

"  You  needn't  mourn  that  lost  ideal,"  she  said. 
"  Young  Williams  showed  me  the  door.  It  was  in  your 
office,  and  he  actually  did  show  me  the  door.  He  was 
glad  to  perjure  himself,  he  said,  for  you.  Not  for  money. 
Not  for  me." 

Jeff  laughed  out. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  that's  something  to  the  good  anyway. 
We  haven't  lost  young  Williams.  He  wrote  to  me,  not 
long  ago.  When  I  answer  it,  I'll  tell  him  he's  something 
to  the  good." 

But  Madame  Beattie  was  not  going  to  waste  time  on 
young  Williams. 

"  It  ought  to  be  a  criminal  offence,"  she  said  rapidly, 
"  to  be  such  a  fool.  You  had  the  world  in  your  hand. 


THE  PRISONER  413 

You've  got  it  still.  You  and  Esther  could  run  such  a 
race!  think  what  you've  got,  both  of  you,  youth,  beauty, 
charm.  You  could  make  your  way  just  by  persuasion, 
persuading  this  man  to  one  thing  and  that  man  to  another. 
How  Esther  could  help  you!  Don't  you  see  she's  an 
asset?  What  if  you  don't  love  her?  Love!  I  know  it 
from  the  first  letter  to  the  last,  and  there's  nothing  in  it, 
Jeff,  nothing.  But  if  you  make  money  you  can  buy  the 
whole  world." 

Her  eager  old  face  was  close  to  his,  the  eyes,  greed}', 
ravenous,  glittered  into  his  and  struck  their  base  mes 
sages  deeper  and  deeper  into  his  soul.  The  red  of  nature 
had  come  into  her  cheeks  and  fought  there  with  the  over 
lying  hue  of  art.  Jeff,  from  an  instinct  of  blind  cour 
age,  met  her  gaze  and  tried  to  think  he  was  defying  it 
bravely.  But  he  was  overwhelmed  with  shame  for  her 
because  she  was  avowedly  what  she  was.  Often  he  could 
laugh  at  her  good-tempered  cynicism.  Over  her  now,  for 
he  actually  did  have  a  kind  of  affection  for  her,  he  could 
have  cried. 

"  Don't !  "  he  said  involuntarily,  and  she  misunderstood 
him.  His  shame  for  her  disgrace  she  had  taken  for  yield 
ing  and  she  redoubled  the  hot  torrent  of  temperamental 
persuasion. 

"  I  will,"  she  said  fiercely,  "  until  you  get  on  your  legs 
and  act  like  a  man.  Go  to  Esther.  Go  to  her  now,  this 
night.  Come  with  me.  Make  love  to  her.  She's  a  pretty 
woman.  Sweep  her  off  her  feet.  Tell  her  you're  going 
to  make  good  and  she's  going  to  help  you." 

Jeff  rose  and  stepped  out  of  the  car.  The  ravenous  old 
hand  still  dragged  at  his  arm,  but  he  lifted  it  quietly  and 
gave  it  back  to  her.  He  stood  there  a  moment,  his  hat  off, 
and  signalled  the  chauffeur.  Madame  Beattie  leaned  over 
to  him  until  her  eyes  were  again  glittering  into  his. 


414  THE  PRISONER 

"Is  that  it?"  she  asked.  "Are  you  going  to  run 
away  ? " 

"  Yes,"  said  Jeff,  quietly.     "  I'm  going  to  run  away." 

The  man  came  and  Jeff  stood  there,  hat  still  in  hand, 
until  the  car  had  started.  He  felt  like  showing  her  an 
exaggerated  courtesy.  Jeff  thought  he  had  never  been  so 
sorry  for  anybody  in  his  life  as  for  Madame  Beattie. 

Madame  Beattie  drew  her  cloak  the  closer,  sunk  her 
chin  in  it  and  concluded  Jeff  was  done  with  her.  She  was 
briefly  sorry  though  not  from  shame.  It  scarcely  discon 
certed  her  to  find  he  liked  her  even  less  than  she  had 
thought.  Where  was  his  large  tolerance,  she  might  have 
asked,  the  moral  neutrality  of  the  man  of  the  world? 

He  had  made  it  incumbent  on  her  merely  to  take  other 
measures,  and  next  day,  seeing  Lydia  walk  past  the  house, 
she  went  to  call  on  Anne.  Her  way  was  smooth.  Anne 
herself  came  to  the  door  in  the  neighbourly  Addington 
fashion  when  help  was  busy,  and  took  her  into  the  library, 
expressing  regret  that  her  father  was  not  there.  The  fam 
ily  had  gone  out  on  various  errands.  This  she  offered  in 
her  gentle  way,  even  with  a  humorous  ruefulness,  Madame 
Beattie  would  find  her  so  inadequate.  To  Anne,  Madame 
Beattie  was  exotic  as  some  strange  eastern  flower,  not  less 
impressive  because  it  was  a  little  wilted  and  showed  the 
results  of  brutal  usage. 

Madame  Beattie  composedly  took  off  her  cloak  and  put 
her  feet  up  on  the  fender,  an  attitude  which  perilously 
tipped  her  chair.  On  this  Anne  solicitously  volunteered 
to  move  the  fender  and  did  it,  bringing  the  high-heeled 
shoes  comfortably  near  the  coals.  Then  Madame  Beattie, 
wasting  no  time  in  preliminaries,  began,  with  great  cir 
cumspection  and  her  lisp,  and  told  Anne  the  later  story 
of  the  necklace.  To  her  calm  statement  of  Esther's  thiev- 


THE  PRISONER  415 

ery  Anne  paid  a  polite  attention  though  no  credence.  She 
had  not  believed  it  when  Lydia  told  her.  Why  should 
she  be  the  more  convinced  from  these  withered  lisping 
lips?  But  Madame  Beattie  went  on  explicitly,  through 
the  picturesque  tale  of  Lydia  and  the  necklace  and  the 
bag.  Then  Anne  looked  at  her  in  unaffected  horror.  She 
sat  bolt  upright,  her  slender  figure  tense  with  expectation, 
her  hands  clasped  rigidly.  Madame  Beattie  enjoyed  this 
picture  of  a  sympathetic  attention,  a  nature  played  upon 
by  her  dramatic  mastery.  Anne  had  no  backwardness  in 
believing  now,  the  deed  was  so  exactly  Lydia's.  She  could 
see  the  fierce  impulse  of  its  doing,  the  reckless  haste,  no 
pause  for  considering  whether  it  were  well  to  do.  She 
could  appreciate  Lydia's  silence  afterward.  "  Poor  dar 
ling  !  "  she  murmured,  and  though  Madame  Beattie  inter 
rogated  sharply,  "What?"  she  was  not  to  hear.  All 
the  mother  in  Anne,  faithfully  and  constantly  brooding 
over  Lydia,  grew  into  passion.  She  could  hardly  wait  to 
get  the  little  sinner  into  her  arms  and  tell  her  she  was 
eternally  befriended  by  Anne's  love.  Madame  Beattie  was 
coming  to  conclusions. 

"  The  amount  of  the  matter  is,"  she  said,  "  I  must  be 
paid  for  the  necklace." 

"  But,"  Anne  said,  with  the  utmost  courtesy,  "  I  un 
derstand  you  have  the  necklace." 

"  That  isn't  the  point,"  said  Madame  Beattie.  "  I  have 
been  given  a  great  deal  of  annoyance,  and  I  must  be 
compensated  for  that.  What  use  is  a  necklace  that  I  can 
neither  sell  nor  even  pawn  ?  I  am  in  honour  bound  "  — 
and  then  she  went  on  with  her  story  of  the  Royal  Person 
age,  to  which  Anne  listened  humbly  enough  now,  since  it 
seemed  to  touch  Lydia.  Madame  Beattie  came  to  her  al 
ternative  :  if  nobody  paid  her  money  to  ensure  her  silence, 


416  THE  PRISONER 

she  would  go  to  Weedon  Moore  and  give  him  the  story  of 
Esther's  thievery  and  of  Lydia's.  Anne  rose  from  her 
chair. 

"  You  have  come  to  me,"  she  said,  "  to  ask  a  thing  like 
that  ?  To  ask  for  money  — 

"  You  are  to  influence  Jeff,"  Madame  Beattie  lisped. 
"  Jeff  can  do  almost  anything  he  likes  if  he  doesn't  waste 
himself  muddling  round  with  turnips  and  evening  schools. 
You  are  to  tell  him  his  wife  and  the  imp  are  going  to  be 
shown  up.  He  wouldn't  believe  me.  He  thinks  he  can 
thrash  Moore  and  there'll  be  an  end  of  it.  But  it  won't  be 
an  end  of  it,  my  dear,  for  there  are  plenty  of  channels 
besides  Weedon  Moore.  You  tell  him.  If  he  doesn't  care 
for  Esther  he  may  for  the  little  imp.  He  thinks  she's 
very  nice." 

Madame  Beattie  here,  in  establishing  an  understanding, 
leered  a  little  in  the  way  of  indicating  a  man's  pliability 
when  he  thought  a  woman  "  very  nice  ",  and  this  finished 
the  utter  revolt  of  Anne,  who  stood,  her  hand  on  a  chair 
back,  gazing  at  her. 

"  I  never,"  said  Anne,  in  a  choked  way,  "  I  never  heard 
such  horrible  things  in  my  life."  Then,  to  her  own  amaze 
ment,  for  she  hardly  knew  the  sensation  and  never  with 
such  intensity  as  overwhelmed  her  now,  Anne  felt  very 
angry.  "  Why,"  she  said,  in  a  tone  that  sounded  like 
wonder,  "  you  are  a  dreadful  woman.  Do  you  know  what 
a  dreadful  woman  you  are?  Oh,  you  must  go  away, 
Madame  Beattie.  You  must  go  out  of  this  house  at  once. 
I  can't  have  you  here." 

Madame  Beattie  looked  up  at  her  in  a  pleasant  indif 
ference,  as  if  it  rather  amused  her  to  see  the  grey  dove 
bristling  for  its  young.  Anne  even  shook  the  chair  she 
held,  as  if  she  were  shaking  Madame  Beattie. 

"  I  mean  it,"  she  said.     "  I  can't  have  you  stay  here. 


THE  PRISONER  417 

My  father  might  come  in  and  be  civil  to  you,  and  I  won't 
have  anybody  civil  to  you  in  this  house.  Lydia  might 
come  in,  and  Lydia  likes  you.  Why,  Madame  Beattie, 
can  you  bear  to  think  Lydia  likes  you,  when  you're  will 
ing  to  say  the  things  you  do  ?  " 

Madame  Beattie  was  still  not  moved  except  by  mild 
amusement.  Anne  left  the  chair  and  took  a  step  nearer. 

"  Madame  Beattie,"  she  said,  "  you  don't  believe  a  word 
I  say.  But  I  mean  it.  You've  got  to  go  out  of  this  house, 
or  I  shall  put  you  out  of  it  with  my  hands.  With  my 
hands,  Madame  Beattie  —  and  I'm  very  strong." 

Madame  Beattie  was  no  coward,  but  she  was  not  young 
and  she  had  a  sense  of  physical  inadequacy.  About  Anne 
there  was  playing  the  very  spirit  of  tragic  anger,  none  of 
it  for  effect,  not  in  the  least  gauged  by  any  idea  of  its 
efficiency.  Those  slender  hands,  gripping  each  other  until 
the  knuckles  blanched,  were  ready  for  their  act.  The 
girl's  white  face  was  lighted  with  eyes  of  fire.  Madame 
Beattie  rose  and  slowly  assumed  her  cloak. 

"  You're  a  silly  child,"  she  said.  "  When  you're  as 
old  as  I  am  you'll  have  more  common-sense.  You'd  rather 
risk  a  scandal  than  tell  Jeff  he  has  a  debt  to  pay.  By 
to-morrow  you'll  see  it  as  I  do.  Come  to  me  in  the  morn 
ing,  and  we'll  talk  it  over.  I  won't  act  before  then." 

She  walked  composedly  to  the  door  and  Anne  scrupu 
lously  held  it  for  her.  They  went  through  the  hall,  Anne 
following  and  ready  to  open  the  last  door  also.  But  she 
closed  it  without  saying  good-bye,  in  answer  to  Madame 
Beattie's  oblique  nod  over  her  shoulder  and  the  farewell 
wave  of  her  hand.  For  an  instant  Anne  felt  like  slipping 
the  bolt  lest  her  adversary  should  return,  but  she  re 
flected,  with  a  grimness  new  to  her  gentle  nature,  that  if 
Madame  Beattie  did  return  her  own  two  hands  were  ready. 
She  stood  a  moment,  listening,  and  when  the  carriage 


418  THE  PRISONER 

wheels  rolled  away  down  the  drive,  she  went  to  the  big 
closet  under  the  stairs  and  caught  at  her  own  coat  and 
hat.  She  was  going,  as  fast  as  her  feet  would  carry 
her,  to  see  Alston  Choate. 


XXXVII 

Alston  Choate  was  working,  and  he  was  alone.  Anne, 
bright-eyed  and  anxious,  came  in  upon  him  and 
brought  him  to  his  feet.  Anne  had  learned  this  year 
that  you  should  not  knock  at  the  door  of  business  offices, 
but  she  still  half  believed  you  ought,  and  it  gave  her  en 
trance  something  of  deprecation  and  a  pretty  grace. 

"I  am  so  troubled,"  she  said,  without  preliminary. 
"  Madame  Beattie  has  just  been  to  see  me." 

Alston,  smiling  away  her  agitation,  if  he  might,  by  a 
kind  assumption  that  there  was  no  conceivable  matter 
that  could  not  be  at  once  put  right,  gave  her  a  chair  and 
himself  went  back  to  his  judicial  seat.  Anne,  not  loosening 
her  jacket,  looked  at  him,  her  face  pure  and  appealing 
above  the  fur  about  her  throat,  as  if  to  beg  him  to  be  as 
kind  as  he  possibly  could,  since  it  all  involved  Lydia. 

"  I've  no  doubt  it's  Madame  Beattie,"  said  Alston 
carelessly,  even  it  might  have  been  a  little  amused  at 
the  possibilities.  "  If  there's  a  ferment  anywhere  north 
of  Central  America  she's  pretty  certain  to  have  set  it 
brewing." 

Anne  told  him  her  tale  succinctly,  and  his  unconcern 
crumbled.  He  frowned  over  the  foolishness  of  it,  and  con 
sidered,  while  she  talked,  whether  he  had  better  be  quite 
open  with  her,  or  whether  it  was  sufficient  to  take  the 
responsibility  of  the  thing  and  settle  it  like  a  swaggering 
god  warranted  to  rule.  That  was  better,  he  concluded. 

"  I'll  go  to  see  Madame  Beattie,"  he  said.  "  Then  I'll 
report  to  you.  But  you'd  better  not  speak  to  Lydia 
about  it.  Or  Jeff.  Promise  me." 

419 


420  THE  PRISONER 

"  Oh,  I'll  promise,"  said  Anne,  a  lovely  rose  flush  on 
her  face.  "  Only,  if  Lydia  is  in  danger  you  must  tell  me 
in  time  to  do  something.  I  don't  know  what,  but  you 
know  for  Lydia  I'd  do  anything." 

"I  will,  too,"  said  Alston.  "Only  it  won't  be  for 
Lydia  wholly.  It'll  be  for  you." 

Then  for  an  instant,  though  so  alive  to  her,  he  seemed 
to  withdraw  into  remote  cogitation,  and  she  wondered 
whether  he  was  really  thinking  of  the  case  at  all.  Because 
she  was  in  a  lawyer's  office  she  called  it  a  case,  timorously ; 
that  made  it  much  more  serious.  But  Alston,  in  that  in 
stant,  was  thinking  how  strange  it  was  that  the  shabby 
old  office,  witness  of  his  unwilling  drudgery  and  his  life- 
saving  excursions  into  the  gardens  of  fiction,  should  be 
looking  now  on  her,  seated  there  in  her  earnestness  and 
purity,  and  that  he  should  at  last  be  recognising  her.  She 
was  a  part  of  him,  Alston  thought,  beloved,  not  because 
she  was  so  different  but  so  like.  There  was  no  assault 
of  the  alien  nature  upon  his  own,  irresistible  because  so 
piquing.  There  were  no  unexplored  tracts  he  couldn't  at 
least  fancy,  green  swards  and  clear  waters  where  a  man 
might  be  refreshed.  Everything  he  found  there  would 
be,  he  knew,  of  the  nature  of  the  approaches  to  that  gentle 
paradise.  What  a  thing,  remote,  extraordinary  to  think 
of  in  his  office  while  she  brought  him  the  details  of  a 
tawdry  scandal.  Yet  the  office  bore,  to  his  eyes,  invisible 
traces  of  past  occupancy:  men  and  women  out  of  books 
were  there,  absolutely  vivid  to  his  eyes,  more  alive  than 
half  the  Addingtonians.  The  walls  were  hung  with  gar 
lands  of  fancy,  the  windows  his  dreaming  eyes  had  looked 
from  were  windows  into  space  beyond  Addington.  No, 
these  were  no  common  walls,  yet  unfitting  to  gaze  on  while 
you  told  a  client  you  loved  her.  After  all,  on  rapid  second 
thought,  it  might  not  seem  so  inapt  seen  through  his 


THE  PRISONER  421 

mother's  eyes,  as  she  was  betraying  herself  now  in  more 
than  middle  age.  "  Ask  her  wherever  you  find  yourselves," 
he  fancied  his  mother  saying.  "  That  is  part  of  the  ad 
venture." 

Alston  looked  at  Anne  and  smiled  upon  her  and  in 
voluntarily  she  smiled  back,  though  she  saw  no  cause  for 
cheerfulness  in  the  dismal  errand  she  had  come  on.  She 
started  a  little,  too,  for  Alston,  in  the  most  matter  of 
fact  way,  began  with  her  first  name. 

"  Anne,"  said  he,  "  I  have  for  a  long  time  been  —  "  he 
paused  for  a  word.  The  ones  he  found  were  all  too  dig 
nified,  too  likely  to  be  wanted  in  a  higher  cause  — "  be 
witched,"  he  continued,  "  over  Esther  Blake." 

The  colour  ran  deeper  into  Anne's  face. 

"  You  don't  want,"  she  said,  "  to  do  anything  that 
might  hurt  her?  I  shouldn't  want  to,  either.  But  it  isn't 
Esther  we're  talking  about.  It's  Madame  Beattie." 

"  I  know,"  said  Alston,  "  but  I  want  you  to  know  I  have 
been  very  much  —  I've  made  a  good  deal  of  a  fool  of  my 
self  over  Mrs.  Blake." 

Still  he  obstinately  would  not  say  he  had  been  in  love. 
Anne,  looking  at  him  with  the  colour  rising  higher  and 
higher,  hardly  seemed  to  understand.  But  suddenly  she 
did. 

"  You  don't  mean  —  "  she  stammered.  "  Mr.  Choate, 
she's  married,  you  know,  even  if  she  and  Jeff  aren't  to 
gether  any  more.  Esther  is  married." 

"  I  know  it,"  said  Alston  drily.  "  I've  wished  they 
weren't  married.  I've  wished  I  could  ask  her  to  marry  me. 
But  I  don't  any  longer.  You  won't  understand  at  all 
why  I  say  it  now.  Sometime  I'll  tell  you  when  you've  no 
ticed  how  I  have  to  stand  up  against  my  cut  and  dried 
ways.  Anne,  I'm  talking  to  you." 

She  had  got  on  her  feet  and  was   fumbling  with  the 


THE  PRISONER 

upper  button  of  her  coat  which  had  not  been  unloosed. 
But  that  she  didn't  remember  now.  She  was  in  a  me 
chanical  haste  of  making  ready  to  go.  Alston  rose,  too, 
and  was  glad  to  find  he  was  the  taller.  It  gave  him  a 
mute  advantage  and  he  needed  all  he  could  get. 

"  I'm  telling  you  something  quite  important,"  he  said, 
in  a  tone  that  set  her  momentarily  and  fallaciously  at 
ease.  "  It's  going  to  be  very  important  to  both  of  us. 
Dear  Anne  !  darling  Anne !  "  He  broke  down  and  laughed, 
her  eyes  were  so  big  with  the  surprise  of  it,  almost,  it  might 
be,  with  fright.  "  That's  because  I'm  in  love  with  you," 
said  Alston.  "  I've  forgotten  every  other  thing  that  ever 
happened  to  me,  all  except  this  miserable  thing  I've  just 
told  you.  I  had  to  tell  you,  so  you'd  know  the  worst  of 
me.  Darling  Anne !  "  He  liked  the  sound  of  it. 

"  I  must  go,"  said  Anne. 

"  You'd  better,"  said  Alston.  "  It'll  be  much  nicer  to 
ask  you  the  rest  of  it  in  a  proper  place.  Anne,  I've  had 
so  much  to  do  with  proper  places  I'm  sick  of  'em.  That's 
why  I've  begun  to  say  it  here.  Nothing  could  be  more 
improper  in  all  Addington.  Think  about  it.  Be  ready 
to  tell  me  when  I  come,  though  that  won't  be  for  a  long 
time.  I'm  going  to  write  you  things,  for  fear,  if  I  said 
them,  you'd  say  no.  And  don't  really  think.  Just 
remember  you're  darling  Anne." 

She  gave  him  a  grave  look  —  Alston  wondered  after 
ward  if  it  could  possibly  be  a  reproving  one  —  and,  with 
a  fine  dignity,  walked  to  the  door.  Since  he  had  begun 
to  belie  his  nature,  mischief  possessed  him.  He  wanted 
to  go  as  far  as  he  audaciously  could  and  taste  the  sweet 
and  bitter  of  her  possible  kindness,  her  almost  certain 
blame. 

"  Good-bye,"  he  said,  "  darling  Anne." 

This  was  as  the  handle  of  the  door  was  in  his  grasp 


THE  PRISONER  423 

ready  to  be  turned  for  her.  Anne,  still  inexplicably  grave, 
was  looking  at  him. 

"  Good-bye,"  she  said,  "  Mr.  Choate." 

He  watched  her  to  the  head  of  the  stairs,  and  then 
shut  the  door  on  her  with  a  click.  Alston  was  con 
scious  of  having,  for  the  joy  of  the  moment,  really  made 
a  fool  of  himself.  But  he  didn't  let  it  depress  him.  He 
needed  his  present  cleverness  too  much  to  spend  a  grain  of 
it  on  self-reproach.  He  went  to  his  safe  and  took  out  a 
paper  that  had  been  lying  there  ready  to  be  used,  slipped 
it  into  his  pocket  and  went,  before  his  spirit  had  time  to 
cool,  to  see  Madame  Beattie. 

Sophy  admitted  him  and  left  him  in  the  library,  while 
she  went  to  summon  her.  And  Madame  Beattie  came, 
finding  him  at  the  window,  his  back  turned  on  the  warm 
breathing  presences  of  Esther's  home.  If  he  had  pene 
trated,  for  good  cause,  to  Circe's  bower,  he  didn't  mean 
to  drink  in  its  subtle  intimacies.  At  the  sound  of  a 
step  he  turned,  and  Madame  Beattie  met  him  peace 
ably,  with  outstretched  hand.  Alston  dropped  the  hand 
as  soon  as  possible.  Lydia  might  swear  she  was  clean  and 
that  her  peculiarity  second-hand  look  was  the  effect  of  over 
worn  black,  but  Alston  she  had  always  impressed  as  much- 
damaged  goods  that  had  lost  every  conceivable  inviting 
freshness.  She  indicated  a  chair  conveniently  opposite 
her  own  and  he  sat  down  and  at  once  began. 

"  Madame  Beattie,  I  have  come  to  talk  over  this  un 
fortunate  matter  of  the  necklace." 

"  Oh,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  with  a  perfect  affability 
and  no  apparent  emotion,  "  Anne  French  has  been  chat 
tering  to  you." 

"  Naturally,"  said  Choate.  "  I  am  their  counsel,  hers 
and  her  sister's." 

"  These  aren't  matters  of  law,"  said  Madame  Beattie. 


THE  PRISONER 

"  They  are  very  interesting  personal  questions,  and  I  ad 
vise  you  to  let  them  alone.  You  won't  find  any  precedent 
for  them  in  your  books." 

"  I  have  been  unpardonably  slow  in  coming  to  you," 
said  Alston.  "  And  my  coming  now  hasn't  so  very  much 
to  do  with  Lydia  and  Anne.  I  might  have  come  just  the 
same  if  you  hadn't  begun  to  annoy  them." 

"  Well,"  said  Madame  Beattie  impatiently.  She 
wanted  her  nap,  for  she  was  due  that  evening  at  street 
corners  in  Mill  End.  "  Get  to  the  point,  if  you  please." 

"  The  point  is,"  said  Alston,  "  that  some  months  ago 
when  you  began  to  make  things  unpleasant  for  a  num 
ber  of  persons  —  " 

"  Nonsense ! "  said  Madame  Beattie  briskly.  "  I 
haven't  made  things  unpleasant.  I've  only  waked  this 
town  out  of  its  hundred  years'  sleep.  You'd  better  be 
thankful  to  me,  all  of  you.  Trade  is  better,  politics  are 
most  exciting,  everything's  different  since  I  came." 

"  I  sent  at  once  to  Paris,"  said  Alston,  with  an  impar 
tial  air  of  conveying  information  they  were  equally  inter 
ested  in,  "  for  the  history  of  the  Beattie  necklace.  And 
I've  got  it.  I've  had  it  a  week  or  more,  waiting  to  be 
used."  He  looked  her  full  in  the  face  to  see  how  she 
took  it.  He  would  have  said  she  turned  a  shade  more 
unhealthy,  in  a  yellow  way,  but  not  a  nerve  in  her  seemed 
to  blench. 

"  Well,"  said  she,  "  have  you  come  to  tell  me  the  his 
tory  of  the  Beattie  necklace  ?  " 

"  Briefly,"  said  Alston,  "  it  was  given  the  famous  singer, 
as  she  states,  by  a  certain  Royal  Personage.  We  are  not 
concerned  with  his  identity,  his  nationality  even.  But  it 
was  a  historic  necklace,  and  he'd  no  business  to  give  it  to 
her  at  all.  There  were  some  rather  shady  transactions 
before  he  could  get  his  hands  on  it.  And  the  Royal  Fam- 


THE  PRISONER  425 

ily  never  ceased  trying  to  get  it  back.  The  Royal  Per 
sonage  was  a  young  man  when  he  gave  it  to  her,  but  by 
the  time  the  family'd  begun  to  exert  pressure  he  wasn't  so 
impetuous,  and  he,  too,  wanted  it  back.  His  marriage 
gave  the  right  romantic  reason,  which  he  used.  He  ac 
tually  asked  the  famous  singer  to  return  it  to  him,  and  at 
the  same  time  she  was  approached  by  some  sort  of  agent 
from  the  family  who  offered  her  a  fat  compensation." 

"  It  was  a  matter  of  sentiment,"  said  Madame  Beattie 
loftily.  "  You've  no  right  to  say  it  was  a  question  of 
money.  It  is  extremely  bad  taste." 

"  She  had  ceased  singing,"  said  Alston.  "  Money 
meant  more  to  her  than  the  jewels  it  would  have  been 
inexpedient  to  display.  For  by  that  time,  she  didn't  want 
to  offend  any  royal  families  whatever.  So  she  was  bought 
off,  and  she  gave  up  the  necklace." 

"  It  is  not  true,"  said  she.  "  If  it  was  money  I  wanted, 
I  could  have  sold  it." 

"  Oh,  no,  I  beg  your  pardon.  There  would  have  been 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  selling  historic  stones ;  besides 
there  were  so  many  royal  personages  concerned  in  keeping 
them  intact.  It  might  have  been  very  different  when  the 
certain  Royal  Personage  was  young  enough  and  impetuous 
enough  to  swear  he  stood  behind  you.  He'd  got  to  the 
point  where  he  might  even  have  sworn  he  never  gave  them 
to  you." 

She  uttered  a  little  hoarse  exclamation,  a  curse,  Alston 
could  believe,  in  whatever  tongue. 

"Besides,"  he  continued,  "as  I  just  said,  Madame 
Beattie  wasn't  willing,  on  the  whole,  to  offend  her  royal 
patrons,  though  she  wasn't  singing  any  longer.  She  had 
a  good  many  favours  to  ask  of  the  world,  and  she  didn't 
want  Europe  made  too  hot  to  hold  her." 

He  paused  to  rest  a  moment  from  his  thankless  task, 


426  THE  PRISONER 

and  they  looked  at  each  other  calmly,  yet  quite  recog 
nising  they  were  at  grips. 

"  You  forget,"  said  she,  "  that  I  have  the  necklace  at 
this  moment  in  my  possession.  You  have  seen  it  and 
handled  it." 

"  No,"  said  Alston,  "  I  have  never  seen  the  necklace. 
Nobody  has  seen  it  on  this  side  the  water.  When 
you  came  here  years  ago  and  got  Jeff  into  difficulties  you 
brought  another  necklace,  a  spurious  one,  paste,  stage 
jewels,  I  daresay,  and  none  of  us  were  clever  enough  to 
know  the  difference.  You  said  it  was  the  Beattie  neck 
lace,  and  Esther  was  hypnotised  and  — 

"  And  stole  it,"  Madame  Beattie  put  in,  with  a  real  en 
joyment  now. 

"  And  Jeff  was  paralysed  by  loving  Esther  so  much  that 
he  didn't  look  into  it.  And  as  soon  as  he  was  out  of 
prison  you  came  here  and  hypnotised  us  all  over  again. 
But  it's  not  the  necklace." 

Madame  Beattie  put  back  her  head  and  burst  into 
hoarse  and  perfectly  spontaneous  laughter. 

"  And  it  was  for  you  to  find  it  out,"  she  said.  "  I  didn't 
think  you  were  so  clever,  Alston  Choate.  I  didn't  know 
you  were  clever  at  all.  You  refresh  me.  God  bless  us ! 
to  think  not  one  of  them  had  the  sense,  from  first  to 
last,  to  guess  the  thing  was  paste." 

Alston  enjoyed  his  brief  triumph,  a  little  surprised 
at  it  himself.  He  had  no  idea  she  would  back  down  in 
stantly,  nor  indeed,  though  it  were  hammered  into  her, 
that  she  would  own  the  game  was  up.  The  same  recoil 
struck  her  and  she  ludicrously  cocked  an  eye. 

"  I  shall  give  you  a  lot  of  trouble  yet  though.  The 
necklace  may  be  a  dead  issue,  but  I'm  a  living  dog,  Alston 
Choate.  Don't  they  say  a  living  dog  is  better  than  a 
dead  lion?  Well,  I*m  living  and  I'm  here." 


THE  PRISONER  427 

He  saw  her  here  indefinitely,  rolling  about  in  hacks,  in 
phaetons,  in  victorias,  in  motors,  perpetually  stirring  two 
houses  at  least  to  nervous  misery.  There  would  be  no 
running  away  from  her.  They  would  have  her  absurdly 
tied  about  their  necks  forever. 

"  Madame  Beattie !  "  said  he.  This  was  Alston's  great 
day,  he  reflected,  with  a  grimace  all  to  himself.  He  had 
never  put  so  much  impetuosity,  so  much  daring  to  the 
square  inch,  into  any  day  before.  He  lounged  back  a 
little  in  his  chair,  put  his  hands  in  his  pockets  and  tried 
to  feel  swaggering  and  at  ease.  Madame  Beattie,  he  knew, 
wouldn't  object  to  swagger.  And  if  it  would  help  him 
dramatically,  so  much  the  better.  "  Madame  Beattie,"  he 
repeated,  "  I've  a  proposition  to  make  to  you.  I  thought 
of  it  within  the  last  minute." 

Her  eyes  gleamed  out  at  him  expectantly,  avariciously, 
with  some  suspicion,  too.  She  hoped  it  concerned  money, 
but  it  seemed  unlikely,  so  chill  a  habit  of  life  had  men  of 
Addington. 

"  It  is  absolutely  my  own  idea,"  said  Alston.  "  No 
body  has  suggested  it,  nobody  has  anything  whatever  to 
do  with  it.  If  I  give  myself  time  to  think  it  over  I  sha'n't 
make  it  at  all.  What  would  you  take  to  leave  Addington, 
lock,  stock  and  barrel,  cut  stick  to  Europe  and  sign  a 
paper  never  to  come  back  ?  There'd  be  other  things  in  the 
paper.  I  should  make  it  as  tight  as  I  knew  how." 

Madame  Beattie  set  her  lips  and  looked  him  over,  from 
his  well-bred  face  and  his  exceedingly  correct  clothes  to  his 
feet.  She  would  never  have  suspected  an  Addington  man 
of  such  impetus,  no  one  except  perhaps  Jeff  in  the 
old  days.  What  was  the  utmost  an  Addington  man 
would  do?  She  had  been  used  to  consider  them  a  meagre 
set. 

"Well?  "said  Alston. 


428  THE  PRISONER 

Madame  Bcattie  blinked  a  little,  and  her  mind  came 
back. 

"  Ten  thousand,"  she  tossed  him  at  a  venture,  in  a 
violence  of  haste. 

Alston  shook  his  head. 

"  Too  much,"  said  he. 

Madame  Beattie,  who  had  not  known  a  tear  for  twenty 
years  at  least,  could  have  cried  then,  the  money  had 
seemed  so  unreasonably,  so  incredibly  near. 

"  You've  got  oceans  of  money,"  said  she,  in  a  passion 
of  eagerness,  "  all  you  Addington  bigwigs.  You  put 
it  away  and  let  it  keep  ticking  on  while  you  eat  noon 
dinners  and  walk  down  town.  What  is  two  thousand 
pounds  to  you?  In  another  year  you  wouldn't  know 
it." 

"I  sha'n't  haggle,"  said  Alston.  "I'll  tell  you  pre 
cisely  what  I'll  put  into  your  hand  —  with  conditions  - 
if  you  agree  to  make  this  your  farewell  appearance.  I'll 
give  you  five  thousand  dollars.  And  as  a  thrifty  Adding- 
tonian  —  you  know  what  we  are  —  I  advise  you  to  take  it. 
I  might  repent." 

She  leaned  toward  him  and  put  a  shaking  hand  on  his 
knee. 

"  I'll  take  it,"  she  said.  "  I'll  sign  whatever  you  say. 
Give  me  the  money  now.  You  wouldn't  ask  me  to  wait, 
Alston  Choate.  You  wouldn't  play  a  trick  on  me." 

Alston  drew  himself  up  from  his  lounging  ease,  and  as 
he  lifted  the  trembling  old  hand  from  his  knee,  gave  it  a 
friendly  pressure  before  he  let  it  fall. 

"I  can't  give  it  to  you  now,"  he  said.  "Not  this 
minute.  Would  you  mind  coming  to  my  office  to-morrow, 
say  at  ten?  We  shall  be  less  open  to  interruption." 

"  Of  course  I'll  come,"  she  said,  almost  passionately. 

He  had  never  seen  her  so   shaken  or  indeed  actually 


THE  PRISONER  429 

moved  from  her  cynical  calm.  She  was  making  her  way 
out  of  the  room  without  waiting  for  his  good-bye.  At  the 
door  she  turned  upon  him,  her  blurred  old  face  a  sad 
sight  below  the  disordered  wig.  Esther,  coming  down 
stairs,  met  her  in  the  hall  and  stopped  an  instant  to 
stare  at  her,  she  looked  so  terrible.  Then  Esther  came 
on  to  Alston  Choate. 

"What  is  it?"  she  began. 

"  I  was  going  to  ask  for  you,"  said  Alston.  "  I  want 
to  tell  you  what  I  have  just  been  telling  Madame  Beattie. 
Then  I  must  see  Jeff  and  his  sisters."  This  sounded  like 
an  afterthought  and  yet  he  was  conscious  that  Anne  was 
in  his  mind  like  a  radiance,  a  glow,  a  warm  sweet  wind. 
"  Everybody  connected  with  Madame  Beattie  ought  to 
understand  clearly  what  she  can  do  and  what  she  can't. 
She  seems  to  have  such  an  extraordinary  facility  for  get- 
ing  people  into  mischief." 

He  placed  a  chair  for  her  and  when  she  sank  into  it, 
her  eyes  inquiringly  on  his  face,  he  began,  still  standing, 
to  tell  her  briefly  the  history  of  the  necklace.  Esther's 
face,  as  he  went  on,  froze  into  dismay.  He  was  telling 
her  that  the  thing  which  alone  had  brought  out  passion 
ate  emotion  in  her  had  never  existed  at  all.  Not  until 
then  had  he  realised  how  she  loved  the  necklace,  the  glitter 
of  it,  the  reputed  value,  the  extraordinary  story  con 
nected  with  it.  Esther's  life  had  been  built  on  it.  And 
when  Alston  had  finished  and  found  she  could  not  speak, 
he  was  sorry  for  her  and  told  her  so. 

"  I'm  sorry,"  he  said  simply. 

Esther  looked  at  him  a  moment  dumbly.  Then  her  face 
convulsed.  She  was  crying. 

"Don't,"  said  Choate  helplessly.  "Don't  do  that. 
The  thing  isn't  worth  it.  It  isn't  worth  anything  to  speak 
of.  And  it's  made  you  a  lot  of  trouble,  all  of  you,  and 


430  THE  PRISONER 

now  she's  going  back  to  Europe  and  she'll  take  it  with 
her." 

"Going  back?"  Esther  echoed,  through  her  tears. 
"  Who  says  she's  going  back?  " 

"  She  says  so,"  Alston  rejoined  weakly.  He  thought 
his  hush  money  might  fairly  be  considered  his  own  secret. 
It  was  like  a  candle  burned  in  gratitude  for  having  found 
out  he  had  dared  to  say,  "  darling  Anne  ". 

"  If  she  would  go  back !  "  said  Esther.  "  But  she  won't. 
She'll  stay  here  and  talk  to  mill  hands  and  drag  dirty 
people  up  those  stairs.  And  I  shall  live  here  forever  with 
her  and  grandmother,  and  nobody  will  help  me.  Nobody 
will  ever  help  me,  Alston  Choate.  Do  you  realise  that? 
Nobody." 

Her  melting  eyes  were  on  his  and  she  herself  was  out 
of  her  chair  and  tremulously  near.  But  Esther  made  no 
mistake  of  a  too  prodigal  largess  a  man  like  Reardon  was 
bewitched  by,  even  if  he  ran  from  it.  She  stood  there  in 
sorrowful  dignity  and  let  her  eyes  plead  for  her.  And 
Alston,  though  he  had  accomplished  something  for  her  as 
well  as  for  Anne,  felt  only  a  sense  of  shame  and  the  misery 
of  falling  short.  He  had  thought  he  loved  her  (he  had 
got  so  far  now  as  to  say  to  himself  he  thought  so)  and  he 
loved  her  no  more.  He  wished  only  to  escape,  and  his 
wish  took  every  shred  of  the  hero  out  of  him. 

"  We'll  all  help  you,"  he  said  with  the  cheerfulness 
exasperatingly  ready  to  be  pumped  up  when  things  are 
bad  and  there  is  no  adequate  remedy.  "  I'd  like  to.  And 
so  will  Jeff." 

With  that  he  put  out  his  hand  to  her,  and  when  she 
unseeingly  accorded  him  hers  gave  it  what  he  thought  an 
awkward,  cowardly  pressure  and  left  her.  There  are  no 
graceful  ways  for  leaving  Circe's  isle,  Alston  thought, 
as  he  hurried  away,  unless  you  have  at  least  worn  the 


THE  PRISONER  431 

hog's  skin  briefly  and  given  her  a  showing  of  legitimate 
triumph.  And  that  night,  because  he  had  a  distaste  for 
talking  about  it  further,  he  wrote  the  story  to  Jeff,  still 
omitting  mention  of  his  candle-burning  honorarium.  To 
Anne,  he  sent  a  little  note,  the  first  of  a  long  series,  won 
dering  at  himself  as  he  wrote  it,  but  sticking  madly  to  his 
audacity,  for  that  queerly  seemed  the  way  to  win  her. 

"Darling    Anne,"    the    note    said.     "It's    all    right. 
I'll  tell  you  sometime.     Meanwhile  you're  not  to  worry. 

"  Your  lover, 

"  ALSTON  CHOATE." 


XXXVIII 

While  the  motor  cars  were  whirling  about  Addington 
and  observers  were  in  an  ecstasy  over  Madame  Beattie's 
electioneering,  Reardon  was  the  more  explicitly  settling  his 
affairs  and  changing  his  sailing  from  week  to  week  as  it 
intermittently  seemed  possible  to  stay.  He  was  in  an 
irritation  of  unrest  when  Esther  did  not  summon  him, 
and  a  panic  of  fear  at  the  prospect  of  her  doing  it.  He 
was  beginning  dimly  to  understand  that  Esther,  even  if 
the  bills  were  to  be  paid,  proposed  to  do  nothing  herself 
about  getting  decently  free.  Reardon  thought  he  could 
interpret  that,  in  a  way  that  enhanced  her  divinity.  She 
was  too  womanly,  he  determined.  How  could  a  creature 
like  her  give  even  the  necessary  evidence?  If  any  one  at 
that  time  believed  sincerely  in  Esther's  clarity  of  soul,  it 
was  Reardon  who  had  not  thought  much  about  souls  until 
he  met  her.  Esther  had  been  a  wonderful  influence  in  his 
life,  transmuting  everyday  motives  until  he  actually 
stopped  now  to  think  a  little  over  the  high  emotions  he 
was  not  by  nature  accustomed  even  to  imagine.  There 
was  something  pathetic  in  his  desire  to  better  himself  even 
in  spiritual  ways.  No  man  in  Addington  had  attained 
a  higher  proficiency  in  the  practical  arts  of  correct  and 
comfortable  living,  and  it  was  owing  to  the  power  of 
Esther's  fastidious  reserves  that  he  had  begun  to  think 
all  women  were  not  alike,  after  all.  There  must  be  some 
thing  in  class,  something  real  and  uncomprehended,  or 
such  a  creature  as  she  could  not  be  born  with  a  difference. 

When  she  came  nearer  him,  when  she  of  her  own  act  sur- 

432 


THE  PRISONER  433 

rendered  and  he  had  drawn  the  exquisite  sum  of  her  into 
his  arms,  he  still  believed  in  her  moral  perfection  to  an 
extent  that  made  her  act  most  terribly  moving  to  him. 
The  act  grew  colossal,  for  it  meant  so  matchless  a  creature 
must  love  him  unquestioningly  or  she  could  not  step  out 
side  her  fine  decorum.  Every  thought  of  her  drew  him 
toward  her.  Every  manly  and  also  every  ambitious  im 
pulse  of  his  entire  life  —  the  ambition  that  bade  him  tread 
as  near  as  possible  to  Addington's  upper  class  —  for 
bade  his  seeking  her  until  he  had  a  right  to.  And  if  she 
would  not  free  herself,  the  right  would  never  be  his. 

One  day,  standing  by  his  window  at  dusk  moodily  look 
ing  out  while  the  invisible  filaments  that  drew  him  to  her 
tightened  unbearably,  he  saw  Jeff  go  past.  At  once  Rear- 
don  knew  Jeff  was  going  to  her,  and  he  found  it  monstrous 
that  the  husband  whose  existence  meant  everything  to 
him  should  be  seeking  her  unhindered.  He  got  his  hat 
and  coat  and  hurried  out  into  the  street  in  time  to  see 
Jeff  turn  in  at  her  gate.  He  strode  along  that  way,  and 
then  halted  and  walked  back  again.  It  seemed  to  him  he 
must  know  at  least  when  Jeff  came  out. 

Jeff  had  been  summoned,  and  Esther  met  him  with  no 
pretence  at  an  artifice  of  coolness.  She  did  not  ask  him 
to  sit  down.  They  stood  there  together  in  the  library 
looking  at  each  other  like  two  people  who  have  urgent 
things  to  say  and  limited  time  to  say  them  in. 

"  Jeff,"  she  began,  "  you're  all  I've  got  in  the  world. 
Aunt  Patrica's  going  away." 

Jeff  clutched  upon  his  reason  and  hoped  it  would  serve 
him  while  something  more  merciful  kept  him  kind. 

"  Good !  "  said  he.     "  That's  a  relief  for  you." 

"  In  a  way,"  said  Esther.  "  But  it  leaves  me  alone, 
with  grandmother.  It's  like  being  with  a  dead  woman. 
I'm  afraid  of  her.  Jeff,  if  you'd  only  thought  of  it  your- 


434  THE  PRISONER 

self !  but  I  have  to  say  it.     Won't  you  come  here  to  live  ?  " 

"  If  he  had  only  thought  of  it  himself ! "  his  heart  iron 
ically  repeated.  Had  he  not  in  the  first  years  of  absence 
from  her  dreamed  what  it  would  be  to  come  back  to  a 
hearth  she  was  keeping  warm? 

"  Esther,"  he  said,  "  only  a  little  while  ago  you  said 
you  were  afraid  of  me." 

Esther  had  no  answer  to  make.  Yefc  she  could  take 
refuge  in  a  perfect  humility,  and  this  she  did. 

"  I  ask  you,  Jeff,"  she  said.     "  I  ask  you  to  come  back." 

The  world  itself  seemed  to  close  about  him,  straiter 
than  the  walls  of  the  room.  Had  he,  in  taking  vows  on 
him  when  he  truly  loved  her,  built  a  prison  he  must  dwell 
in  to  the  end  of  his  life  or  hers  ?  Did  moral  law  demand  it 
of  him?  did  the  decencies  of  Addington? 

"  I  ask  you  to  forgive  me,"  said  Esther.  "  Are  you 
going  to  punish  me  for  what  I  did  ?  " 

"  No,"  said  Jeff,  in  a  dull  disclaimer.  "  I  don't  want 
to  punish  you." 

But  he  did  not  want  to  come  back.  This  her  heart  told 
her,  while  it  cautioned  her  not  to  own  she  knew. 

"  I  shouldn't  be  a  burden  on  you,"  she  said.  "  I  should 
be  of  use,  social  use,  Jeff.  You  need  all  the  pull  you  can 
get,  and  I  could  help  you  there,  tremendously." 

The  same  bribe  Madame  Beattie  had  held  out  to  him, 
he  remembered,  with  a  sorry  smile.  Esther,  Madame 
Beattie  had  cheerfully  determined,  was  to  help  him  placate 
the  little  gods.  Now  Esther  herself  was  offering  her  own 
abetment  in  almost  the  same  terms.  He  saw  no  way  even 
vaguely  to  resolve  upon  what  he  felt  able  to  do,  except  by 
indirection.  They  must  consider  it  together. 

"  Esther,"  he  said,  "  sit  down.  Let  me,  too,  so  we  can 
get  hold  of  ourselves,  find  out  what  we  really  think." 

They  sat,  and  she  clasped  her  hands  in  a  way  prayer- 


THE  PRISONER  435 

fully  suggestive  and  looked  at  him  as  if  she  hung  on  the 
known  value  of  his  words.  Jeff  groped  about  in  his  mind 
for  their  common  language.  What  had  it  been?  — 
laughter,  kisses,  the  feverish  commendation  of  the  pageant 
of  life.  He  sat  there  frowning,  and  when  his  brow  cleared 
it  was  because  he  decided  the  only  way  possible  was  to  open 
the  door  of  his  own  mind  and  let  her  in.  If  she  found 
herself  lonesome,  afraid  even  in  its  furnishings  as  they 
inevitably  were  now,  that  would  tell  them  something.  She 
need  never  come  again. 

"  Esther,"  he  said,  "  the  only  thing  I've  found  out  about 
myself  is  that  I  haven't  found  out  anything.  I  don't 
know  whether  I'm  a  decent  fellow,  just  because  I  want  to  be 
decent,  or  whether  I'm  stunted,  calloused,  all  the  things 
they  say  happen  to  criminals." 

"  Don't,"  said  Esther  sharply.  "  Don't  talk  of  crim 
inals." 

"  I've  got  to.  You  let  me  wander  on  a  minute.  Maybe 
it'll  get  us  somewhere."  He  debated  whether  he  should 
tell  her  he  wanted  to  save  Addington.  No,  she  wouldn't 
understand.  Could  he  tell  her  that  at  that  minute  he 
loved  Addington  better  than  anything  but  Lydia?  and 
Lydia  he  must  still  keep  hidden  in  the  back  of  his  mind 
under  the  green  leaves  of  secrecy.  "  Esther,"  said  he, 
"  Esther,  poor  child,  I  don't  want  you  to  be  a  prisoner 
to  me.  And  I  don't  want  to  be  a  prisoner  to  you.  It 
would  be  a  shocking  wrong  to  you  to  be  condemned  to  live 
with  me  all  your  life  just  because  an  old  woman  has 
scared  you.  What  a  penalty  to  pay  for  being  afraid  of 
Madame  Beattie  —  to  live  with  a  husband  you  had  stopped 
thinking  about  at  all." 

Esther  gave  a  patient  sigh. 

" 1  don't  understand,"  she  said,  "  what  you  are  talking 
about.  And  this  isn't  the  way,  dear,  for  us  to  understand 


436  THE  PRISONER 

each  other.  If  we  love  each  other,  oughtn't  we  to  for 
give?  " 

"  We  do,"  said  Jeff.  "  I  haven't  a  hostile  thought  to 
ward  you.  I  should  be  mighty  sorry  if  you  had  for  me. 
But,  Esther,  whatever  we  feel  for  each  other,  will  the  thing 
stand  the  test  of  the  plain  truth?  If  it's  going  to  have 
any  working  basis,  it's  got  to.  Now,  do  you  love  me? 
No,  you  don't.  We  both  know  we've  changed  beyond  — " 
he  paused  for  a  merciful  simile  — "  beyond  recognition. 
Now  because  we  promised  to  live  together  until  death 
parted  us,  are  we  going  to?  Was  that  a  righteous  prom 
ise  in  view  of  what  might  happen?  The  thing,  you  see, 
has  happened.  If  we  had  children  it  might  be  righteous 
to  hang  together,  for  their  sakes.  Is  it  righteous  now? 
I  don't  believe  it." 

Esther  lifted  her  clasped  hands  and  struck  them  down 
upon  her  knee.  The  rose  of  her  cheek  had  paled,  and  all 
expression  save  a  protesting  incredulity  had  frozen  out 
of  her  face. 

"  I  have  never,"  she  said,  "  been  so  insulted  in  my  life." 

"  That's  it,"  said  Jeff.  "  I  tried  to  tell  the  truth  and 
you  can't  stand  it.  You  tell  it  to  me  now,  and  I'll  see  if 
I  can  stand  your  side  of  it." 

She  was  out  of  her  chair  and  on  her  feet. 

"  You  must  go,"  she  said.     "  You  must  go  at  once." 

66  I'm  sorry,"  said  Jeff.  He  was  looking  at  her  with 
what  Miss  Amabel  called  his  beautiful  smile.  "  You  can't 
possibly  believe  I  want  things  to  be  right  for  you.  But 
it's  true.  I  mean  to  make  them  righter  than  they  are,  too. 
But  I  don't  believe  we  can  shackle  ourselves  together.  I 
don't  believe  that's  right." 

He  went  away,  leaving  her  trembling.  There  was  noth 
ing  for  it  but  to  go.  On  the  sidewalk  not  far  from  her 
door  he  met  Reardon  with  a  casual  nod,  and  Reardon 


THE  PRISONER  437 

blazed  out  at  him,  "  Damn  you !  "  At  least  that  was  what 
Jeff  for  the  instant  thought  he  said  and  turned  to  look 
at  him.  But  Reardon  was  striding  on  and  the  back 
of  his  excellent  great-coat  looked  so  handsomely  conven 
tional  that  Jeff  concluded  he  had  been  mistaken.  He  went 
on  trying  to  sift  his  distastes  and  revulsions  from  what  he 
wanted  to  do  for  Esther.  Something  must  be  done. 
Esther  must  no  more  be  bound  than  he. 

Reardon  did  not  knock  at  her  door.  He  opened  it  and 
went  in  and  Esther  even  passionately  received  him.  They 
greeted  each  other  like  acknowledged  lovers,  and  he  stood 
holding  her  to  him  while  she  sobbed  bitterly  against  his 
arm. 

"  What  business  had  he  ?  "  he  kept  repeating.  "  What 
business  had  he?  " 

"  I  can't  talk  about  it,"  said  Esther.  "  But  I  can  never 
go  through  it  again.  You  must  take  me  away." 

"  I'm  going  myself,"  said  Reardon.  "  I'm  booked  for 
Liverpool." 

Esther  was  spent  with  the  weariness  of  the  years  that 
had  brought  her  no  compensating  joys  for  her  meagre 
life  with  grandmother  upstairs  and  her  most  uneasy  one 
since  Madame  Beattie  came.  How  could  she,  even  if 
Reardon  furnished  money  for  it,  be  sure  to  free  herself 
from  Jeff  in  time  to  taste  some  of  the  pleasures  she  craved 
while  she  was  at  her  prime  of  beauty?  After  all,  there 
were  other  lands  to  wander  in;  it  wasn't  necessary  to  sit 
down  here  and  do  what  Addingtonians  had  done  since 
they  settled  the  wretched  place  on  the  date  they  seemed 
to  find  so  sacred.  So  she  told  him,  in  a  poor  sad  little 
whisper : 

"  I  shall  die  if  you  leave  me." 

"  I  won't  go,"  said  Reardon,  at  once.     "  I'll  stand  by." 

"  You  will  go,"  said  Esther  fiercely,  half  in  anger  be- 


438  THE  PRISONER 

cause  he  had  to  be  cajoled  and  prompted,  "  and  take  me 
with  you." 

Reardon,  standing  there  feeling  her  beating  heart 
against  his  hand,  thought  that  was  how  he  had  known  it 
would  be.  He  had  always  had  a  fear,  the  three-o'clock  - 
waking-in-the-morning  fear,  that  sometime  his  conven 
tions  would  fall  from  him  like  a  garment  he  had  forgotten, 
and  he  should  do  some  act  that  showed  him  to  Addington 
as  he  wras  born.  He  had  too,  sometimes,  a  nightmare, 
pitifully  casual,  yet  causing  him  an  anguish  of  shame: 
murdering  his  grammar  or  smoking  an  old  black  pipe  such 
as  his  father  smoked  and  being  caught  wTith  it,  going  to 
the  club  in  overalls.  But  now  he  realised  what  the  mali 
cious  envy  of  fortune  had  in  store  for  him.  He  was  to 
run  off  with  his  neighbour's  wife.  For  an  instant  he 
weakly  meant  to  recall  her  to  herself,  to  remind  her  that 
she  didn't  want  to  do  it.  But  it  seemed  shockingly  in 
decorous  to  assume  a  higher  standard  than  her  own,  and 
all  he  could  do  was  to  assure  her,  as  he  had  been  assuring 
her  while  he  was  swept  along  that  dark  underground  river 
of  disconcerted  thought :  "  I'll  take  care  of  you." 

"  What  do  you  mean  ?  "  she  returned,  like  a  wild  thing 
leaping  at  him.  "  Do  you  mean  really  take  care  of  me  ? 
over  there?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Reardon,  without  a  last  clutch  at  his  lost 
vision,  "  over  there.  We'll  leave  here  Friday,  for  New 
York." 

<c  I  shall  send  my  trunks  in  advance,"  said  Esther. 
"  By  express.  I  shall  say  I  am  going  for  dressmaking 
and  the  theatre." 

Reardon  settled  down  to  bare  details.  It  would  be 
unwise  to  be  seen  leaving  on  the  same  train,  and  he  would 
precede  her  to  New  York.  It  would  be  better  also  to 


THE  PRISONER  439 

stay  at  different  hotels.  Once  landed  they  would  become 
—  he  said  this  in  the  threadbare  pathetic  old  phrase  — 
man  and  wife  "  in  the  sight  of  God  ".  He  was  trying 
honestly  to  spare  her  exquisite  sensibilities,  and  Esther 
understood  that  she  was  to  be  saved  at  all  points  while 
she  reaped  the  full  harvest  of  her  desires.  Reardon 
kissed  her  solemnly  and  went  away,  at  the  door  meeting 
Madame  Beattie,  who  gave  him  what  he  thought  an  alarm 
ing  look,  at  the  least  a  satirical  one.  Had  she  listened? 
had  she  seen  their  parting?  But  if  she  had,  she  made  no 
comment.  Madame  Beattie  had  her  own  affairs  to  man 
age. 

"  I  have  told  Sophy  to  do  some  pressing  for  me,"  she 
said  to  Esther.  "  After  that,  she  will  pack." 

"  Sophy  isn't  very  fond  of  packing,"  said  Esther 
weakly.  She  was  quite  sure  Sophy  would  refuse  and  was 
immediately  sorry  she  had  given  Madame  Beattie  even 
so  slight  a  warning.  What  did  Sophy's  tempers  matter 
now?  She  would  be  left  behind  with  grandmother  and 
Rhoda  Knox.  What  difference  would  it  make  whether  in 
the  sulks  or  out  of  them? 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  Madame  Beattie  quietly.  "  She'll  do 
it." 

Esther  plucked  up  spirit.  For  weeks  she  had  hardly 
addressed  Madame  Beattie  at  all.  She  dared  not  openly 
show  scorn  of  her,  but  she  could  at  least  live  apart  from 
her.  Yet  it  seemed  to  her  now  that  she  might,  as  a  sort 
of  deputy  hostess  under  grandmother,  be  told  whether 
Madame  Beattie  actually  did  mean  to  go  away. 

"  Are  you  — "  she  hesitated. 

"  Yes,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  "  I  am  sailing.  I  leave 
for  New  York  Friday  morning." 

Esther  had  a  rudimentary  sense  of  humour,  and  it  did 


440  THE  PRISONER 

occur  to  her  that  it  would  be  rather  a  dire  joke  if  she  and 
Madame  Beattie,  inexorably  linked  by  destiny,  were  to  go 
on  the  same  boat.  But  Madame  Beattie  drily  if  inno 
cently  reassured  her.  And  yet  was  it  innocently?  Esther 
could  not  be  sure.  She  was  sailing,  she  explained,  for 
Naples.  She  should  never  think  of  venturing  the  northern 
crossing  at  this  season. 

And  that  afternoon  while  Madame  Beattie  took  her 
drive,  Esther  had  her  own  trunks  brought  to  her  room  and 
she  and  Sophy  packed.  Sophy  was  enchanted.  Mrs. 
Blake  was  going  to  New  York,  so  Mrs.  Blake  told  her, 
and  as  soon  as  she  got  settled  Sophy  would  be  sent  for. 
She  was  not  to  say  anything,  however,  for  Mrs.  Blake's 
going  depended  on  its  being  carried  out  quietly,  for  fear 
Madame  Beattie  should  object.  Sophy  understood.  She 
had  been  quiet  about  many  things  connected  with  the 
tranquillity  dependent  on  Madame  Beattie,  and  she  even 
undertook  to  have  the  express  come  at  a  certain  hour  and 
move  the  trunks  down  carefully.  Sophy  held  many  reins 
of  influence. 

When  Madame  Beattie  came  back  from  driving,  Andrea 
was  with  her.  She  had  called  at  the  shop  and  taken 
him  away  from  his  fruity  barricades,  and  they  had  jogged 
about  the  streets,  Madame  Beattie  talking  and  Andrea 
listening  with  a  profound  concentration,  his  smile  in  abey 
ance,  his  black  eyes  fiery.  When  they  stopped  at  the 
house  Esther,  watching  from  the  window,  contemptuously 
noted  how  familiar  they  were.  Madame  Beattie,  she 
thought,  was  as  intimate  with  a  foreign  fruit-seller  as  with 
one  of  her  own  class.  Madame  Beattie  seemed  impress 
ing  upon  him  some  command  or  at  least  instructions. 
Andrea  listened,  obsequiously  attentive,  and  when  it  was 
over  he  took  his  hat  off,  in  a  grand  manner,  and  bending, 
kissed  her  hand.  He  ran  up  the  steps  and  rang  for  her, 


THE  PRISONER  441 

and  after  she  had  gone  in,  Esther  saw  him,  dramatic 
despondency  in  every  drooping  muscle,  walk  sorrowfully 
away. 

Madame  Beattie,  as  if  she  meant  to  accomplish  all  her 
farewells  betimes,  had  the  hardihood,  this  being  the  hour 
when  Rhoda  Knox  took  an  airing,  to  walk  upstairs  to  her 
step-sister's  room  and  seat  herself  by  the  bedside  before 
grandmother  had  time  to  turn  to  the  wall.  There  she 
sat,  pulling  off  her  gloves  and  talking  casually  as  if  they 
had  been  in  the  habit  of  daily  converse,  while  grand 
mother  lay  and  pierced  her  with  unyielding  eyes.  There 
was  not  emotion  in  the  glance,  no  aversion  or  remonstrance. 
It  was  the  glance  she  had  for  Esther,  for  Rhoda  Knox. 
"  Here  I  am,"  it  said,  "  flat,  but  not  at  your  mercy.  You 
can't  make  me  do  anything  I  don't  want  to  do.  I  am  in 
the  last  citadel  of  apparent  helplessness.  You  can't  any 
of  your  drag  me  out  of  my  bed.  You  can't  even  make  me 
speak."  And  she  would  not  speak.  Esther,  creeping 
out  on  the  landing  to  listen,  was  confident  grandmother 
never  said  a  word.  What  spirit  it  was,  what  indomitable 
pluck,  thought  Esther,  to  lie  there  at  the  mercy  of  Madame 
Beattie,  and  deny  herself  even  the  satisfaction  of  a  reply. 
All  that  Madame  Beattie  said  Esther  could  not  hear,  but 
evidently  she  was  assuring  her  sister  that  she  was  an  arch 
fool  to  lie  there  and  leave  Esther  in  supreme  possession  of 
the  house. 

"  Get  up,"  Madame  Beattie  said,  at  one  point. 
"  There's  nothing  the  matter  with  you.  One  day  of  lib- 
crty'd  be  better  than  lying  here  and  dying  by  inches  and 
having  that  Knox  woman  stare  at  you.  With  your  con 
stitution,  Susan,  you've  got  ten  good  years  before  you. 
Get  up  and  rule  your  house.  I  shall  be  gone  and  you 
won't  have  me  to  worry  you,  and  in  a  few  days  she'll  be 
gone,  too." 


442  THE  PRISONER 

So  she  knew  it,  Esther  realised,  with  a  quickened  heart. 
She  slipped  back  into  her  room  and  stood  there  silent 
until  Madame  Beattie,  calling  Sophy  to  do  some  extra 
service  for  her,  went  away  to  her  own  room.  And  still 
grandmother  did  not  speak. 


XXXIX 

On  the  morning  Madame  Beattie  went,  a  strange  inter 
mittent  procession  trickled  by  the  house,  workmen,  on  their 
way  to  different  activities,  diverted  from  their  usual  road, 
and  halting  an  instant  to  salute  the  windows  with  a  mourn 
ful  gaze.  Some  of  them  took  their  hats  off,  and  the  few 
who  happened  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  Madame  Beattie 
gave  eager  salutation.  At  one  time  a  group  of  them  had 
collected,  and  these  Esther  looked  down  on  with  a  calm 
face  but  rage  in  her  heart,  wondering  why  she  must  be 
disgraced  to  the  last.  But  when  Madame  Beattie  really 
went  there  was  no  one  in  the  street,  and  Esther,  a  cloak 
about  her,  stood  by  the  carriage  in  a  scrupulous  cour 
tesy,  stamping  a  little,  ostensibly  to  keep  her  feet  warm 
but  more  than  half  because  she  was  in  a  fever  of  im 
patience  lest  the  unwelcome  guest  should  be  detained. 
Madame  Beattie  was  irritatingly  slow.  She  arranged 
herself  in  the  hack  as  if  for  a  drive  long  enough  to  demand 
every  precaution.  Esther  knew  perfectly  well  she  was 
being  exasperating  to  the  last,  and  in  that  she  was  right. 
But  she  could  hardly  know  Madame  Beattie  had  not  a 
malevolent  impulse  toward  her :  only  a  careless  under 
standing  of  her,  an  amused  acceptance.  When  she  had 
tucked  herself  about  with  the  robe,  undoing  Denny's  kind 
offices  and  doing  them  over  with  a  tedious  moderation,  she 
put  out  her  arms  to  draw  Esther  into  a  belated  embrace. 
But  Esther  could  not  bear  everything.  She  dodged  it, 
and  Madame  Beattie,  not  at  all  rebuffed,  gave  her  hoarse 

little  crow  of  laughter. 

443 


444  THE  PRISONER 

"  Well,"  said  she,  "  I  leave  you.  But  not  for  long,  I 
daresay." 

"  You'll  be  coming  back  by  spring,"  said  Esther,  willing 
to  turn  off  the  encounter  neatly. 

"  I  might,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  "  if  Susan  dies  and 
leaves  me  everything.  But  I  sha'n't  depend  on  seeing 
you.  We  shall  meet,  of  course,  but  it'll  be  over  there." 
Again  she  laughed  a  little  at  a  disconcerted  stare  from 
Esther.  "Tell  him  to  go  along,"  she  said.  "You'd 
better  make  up  your  mind  to  Italy.  Everything  seems 
right,  there,  even  to  New  Englanders  —  pretty  nearly 
everything.  Au  revoir." 

She  drove  away  chuckling  to  herself,  and  Esther  stood 
a  moment  staring  blankly.  It  had  actually  happened,  the 
incredible  of  which  she  had  dreamed.  Madame  Beattie 
was  going,  and  now  she  herself  was  following  too  soon  to 
get  the  benefit  of  it. 

Lydia  was  out  that  morning  and  Denny,  who  saw  her 
first,  drew  up  of  his  own  accord.  It  was  not  to  be  imag 
ined  by  Denny  that  Madame  Beattie  and  Lydia  should 
have  spent  long  hours  jogging  together  and  not  be  grate 
ful  for  a  last  word.  Madame  Beattie,  deep  in  probing  of 
her  little  hand-bag,  looked  up  at  the  stopping  of  the  hack, 
and  smiled  most  cordially. 

"  Come  along,  imp,"  said  she.  "  Get  in  here  and  go  to 
the  station  with  me." 

Lydia  stepped  in  at  once,  very  glad  indeed  of  a  word 
v/ith  her  unpopular  friend. 

"Are  you  truly  going,  Madame  Beattie?"  she  asked, 
adding  tumultuously,  since  there  was  so  little  time  to  be 
friendly,  "  I'm  sorry.  I  like  you,  you  know,  Madame 
Beattie." 

"  Well,  my  dear,"  said  Madame  Beattie  good-naturedly, 
16 1  fancy  you're  the  only  soul  in  town  that  does,  except 


THE  PRISONER  445 

perhaps  those  nice  workmen  I've  played  the  devil  with.  I 
only  hope  they'll  succeed  in  playing  the  devil  themselves 
a  little,  even  if  I'm  not  here  to  coach  them.  I've  explained 
it  all  very  carefully,  just  as  I  got  the  dirty  little  man  to 
explain  it  to  me,  and  I  think  they'll  be  able  to  manage. 
When  it  all  comes  out  you  can  tell  Jeff  I  did  it.  I  began 
it  when  I  thought  it  might  be  of  some  advantage  to  me, 
but  I've  told  Andrea  to  go  on  with  it.  It'll  be  more  amus 
ing,  on  the  whole." 

"  Go  on  with  what  ?  "  inquired  Lydia. 

"  Never  mind.  But  you  must  write  me  and  tell  me  how 
the  election  went.  I  won't  bother  you  with  my  address, 
but  Alston  Choate'll  give  it  to  you.  He  intends  to  keep 
his  eye  on  me,  the  stupid  person.  I  wouldn't  come  over 
here  again  if  I  were  paid  for  it." 

At  the  station  Lydia,  a  little  sick  and  sorry,  because 
she  hated  changes  and  also  Madame  Beattie  kept  some 
glamour  for  her,  stepped  out  and  gave  her  old  friend  a 
firm  hand  to  help  her  and  then  an  arm  to  lean  on. 
Madame  Beattie  bade  Denny  a  carelessly  affectionate 
farewell  and  left  him  her  staunch  ally.  She  knew  how  to 
bind  her  humbler  adherents  to  her,  and  indeed  with  hon 
esty,  because  she  usually  liked  them  better  than  the  peo 
ple  who  criticised  her  and  combated  and  admired  her 
from  her  own  plane.  After  the  trunks  were  checked  and 
she  still  had  a  margin  of  time,  she  walked  up  and  down  the 
platform  leaning  on  Lydia's  arm,  and  talked  about  the 
greyness  of  New  England  and  the  lovely  immortalities  of 
Italy.  When  they  saw  the  smoke  far  down  the  track,  she 
stopped,  still  leaning  on  Lydia. 

"  You've  been  a  droll  imp,"  she  said.  "  If  I  had  money 
I'd  take  you  with  me  and  amuse  myself  seeing  you  in 
Italy.  Your  imp's  eyes  would  be  rounder  than  they  are 
now,  and  you'd  fall  in  love  with  some  handsome  scamp 


446  THE  PRISONER 

and  find  him  out  and  grow  up  and  leave  him  and  we'd  take 
an  apartment  and  sit  there  and  laugh  at  everything. 
You  can  tell  Jeff — "  the  train  was  really  nearing  now 
and  she  bent  and  spoke  at  Lydia's  ear  — "  tell  him  he's 
going  to  be  a  free  man,  and  if  he  doesn't  make  use  of  his 
freedom  he's  a  fool.  She's  going  to  run  away.  With 
Reardon." 

"  Who's  going  to  run  away  ?  "  Lydia  shrilled  up  into 
her  face.  "  Not  Esther?  " 

"  Esther,  to  be  sure.  I  gather  they're  off  to-night. 
That's  why  I'm  going  this  morning.  I  don't  want  to  be 
concerned  in  the  silly  business,  though  when  they're  over 
there  I  shall  make  a  point  of  looking  them  up.  He'd  pay 
me  anything  to  get  rid  of  me." 

The  train  was  in,  and  her  foot  was  on  the  step.  But 
Lydia  was  holding  her  back,  her  little  face  one  sharp  inter 
rogation. 

"  Not  to  Europe?  "  she  said.  "  You  don't  mean  they're 
going  to  Europe?" 

"  Of  course  I  do,"  said  Madame  Beattie,  extricating 
herself.  "  Where  else  is  there  to  go  ?  No,  I  sha'n't  say 
another  word.  I  waited  till  you  wouldn't  have  a  chance 
to  question  me.  Tell  Jeff,  but  not  till  to-morrow  morning. 
Then  they'll  be  gone  and  it  won't  be  his  responsibility. 
Good-bye,  imp." 

She  did  not  threaten  Lydia  with  envelopment  in  her 
richness  of  velvet  and  fur.  Instead,  to  Lydia's  confusion 
and  wonder,  ever-growing  when  she  thought  about  it  after 
ward,  she  caught  up  her  hand  and  gave  it  a  light  kiss. 
Then  she  stepped  up  into  the  car  and  was  borne  away. 

"  I  don't  believe  it,"  said  Lydia  aloud,  and  she  walked 
off,  glancing  down  once  at  the  hand  that  had  been 
kissed  and  feeling  gravely  moved  by  what  seemed  to  her 
an  honour  from  one  of  Madame  Beattie's  standing.  Lydia 


THE  PRISONER  447 

was  never  to  forget  that  Madame  Beattie  had  been  a  great 
lady,  in  a  different  sense  from  inherited  power  and  place. 
She  was  of  those  who  are  endowed  and  to  whom  the  world 
must  give  something  because  they  have  given  it  so  much. 
Should  she  obey  her,  and  tell  Jeff  after  the  danger  of  his 
stopping  Esther  was  quite  past?  Lydia  thought  she 
would.  And  she  owned  to  herself  the  full  truth  about  it. 
She  did  not  for  an  instant  think  she  ought  to  keep  her 
knowledge  in  obedience  to  Madame  Beattie,  but  she  meant 
at  least  to  give  Jeff  his  chance.  And  as  she  thought,  she 
was  walking  home  fast,  and  when  she  got  there  she  hur 
ried  into  the  library  without  taking  off  her  hat,  and  asked 
the  colonel : 

"  Where's  Jeff?  " 

The  colonel  was  sitting  by  the  fire,  a  book  in  his  hand  in 
the  most  correct  position  for  reading.  He  had  been  deep 
in  one  of  his  friendly  little  naps  and  had  picked  the  book 
up  when  he  heard  her  step  and  held  it  with  a  convincing 
rigour. 

"  He's  gone  off  for  a  tramp,"  said  he,  looking  at  her 
sleepily.  "  He'd  been  writing  and  didn't  feel  very  fit. 
I  advised  him  to  go  and  make  a  day  of  it." 

Anne  came  in  then,  and  Lydia  stared  at  her,  wonder 
ing  if  Anne  could  help.  And  yet,  whatever  Anne  said, 
she  was  determined  not  to  tell  Jeff  until  the  morning.  So 
she  slowly  took  off  her  things  and  made  brisk  tasks  to  do 
about  the  house.  Only  when  the  two  o'clock  train  was 
nearly  due  she  seized  her  hat  and  pinned  it  on,  slipped 
into  her  coat  and  walked  breathlessly  to  the  station.  She 
was  there  just  before  the  train  came  in  and  there  also,  a 
fine  figure  in  his  excellently  fitting  clothes,  was  Reardon. 
He  was  walking  the  platform,  nervously  Lydia  thought, 
but  he  seemed  not  to  be  waiting  for  any  one.  Seeing 
her  he  looked,  though  she  might  have  fancied  it,  momeji- 


448  THE  PRISONER 

tarily  disconcerted,  but  took  off  his  hat  to  her  and  turned 
immediately  to  resume  his  march.  Suppose  Esther  came, 
Lydia  wondered.  What  should  she  do?  Should  she  stop 
her,  block  her  way,  bid  her  remember  Jeff?  Or  should 
she  watch  her  to  the  last  flutter  of  her  hatefully  pretty 
clothes  as  she  entered  the  car  with  Reardon  and,  in  the 
noise  of  the  departing  train,  give  one  loud  hurrah  because 
Jeff  was  going  to  be  free?  But  the  train  came,  and  Rear 
don,  without  a  glance  behind,  though  in  a  curious  haste  as 
if  he  wanted  at  least  to  escape  Lydia's  eyes,  entered  and 
was  taken  away. 

Again  Lydia  went  home,  and  now  she  sat  by  the  fire  and 
could  not  talk,  her  elbows  on  her  knee,  her  chin  supported 
in  her  hands. 

"  What  is  it?  "  Anne  asked  her.     "  You  look  mumpy." 

Yes,  Lydia,  said,  she  was  mumpy.  She  thought  she  had 
a  cold.  But  though  Anne  wanted  to  minister  to  her  she 
was  not  allowed,  and  Lydia  sat  there  and  watched  the 
clock.  At  the  early  dark  she  grew  restless. 

"  Farvie,"  said  she,  "  shouldn't  you  think  Jeff  would 
come  ?  " 

"  Why,  no,"  said  he,  looking  at  her  over  his  glasses, 
doing  the  benevolent  act,  Lydia  called  it.  "  There's  a 
moon,  and  he'll  probably  get  something  to  eat  somewhere 
or  even  come  back  by  train.  It  isn't  his  night  at  the 
school." 

At  six  o'clock  Lydia  began  to  realise  that  if  Esther 
were  going  that  day  she  would  take  the  next  train.  It 
would  not  be  at  all  likely  that  she  took  the  "  midnight  " 
and  got  into  New  York  jaded  in  the  early  morning.  She 
put  on  her  hat  and  coat,  and  was  going  softly  out  when 
Anne  called  to  her : 

"  Lyd,  if  you've  got  a  cold  you  stay  in  the  house." 

Lydia  shut  the  door  behind  her  and  sped  down  the  path. 


THE  PRISONER  449 

She  thought  she  should  die  —  Lydia  had  frequent  crises 
of  dying  when  the  consummations  of  life  eluded  her  —  if 
she  did  not  know  whether  Esther  was  going.  Yet  she 
would  not  tell  Jeff  until  it  was  too  late,  even  if  he  were 
there  on  the  spot  and  if  he  blamed  her  forever  for  not 
telling  him.  This  time  she  stayed  in  a  sheltering  corner 
of  the  station,  and  not  many  minutes  before  the  train  a 
dark  figure  passed  her,  Esther,  veiled,  carrying  her  hand 
bag,  and  walking  fast.  Lydia  could  have  touched  her 
arm,  but  Esther,  in  her  desire  of  secrecy,  was  trying  to  see 
no  one.  She,  too,  stopped,  in  a  deeper  shadow  at  the 
end  of  the  building.  Either  she  had  her  ticket  or  she 
was  depending  on  the  last  minute  for  getting  it.  Lydia, 
with  a  leap  of  conjecture  concluded,  and  rightly,  that  she 
had  sent  Sophy  for  it  in  advance.  The  local  train  came 
in,  bringing  the  workmen  from  the  bridge,  still  being  re 
paired  up  the  track,  and  Lydia  shrank  back  a  little  as 
they  passed  her.  And  among  them,  finishing  a  talk  he  had 
taken  up  on  the  train,  was,  incredibly,  Jeff.  Lydia  did 
not  parley  with  her  dubieties.  She  slipped  after  them  in 
the  shadow,  came  up  to  him  and  touched  him  on  the  arm. 

"Jeff!"  she  said. 

He  turned,  dropped  away  from  the  men  and  stood  there 
an  instant  looking  at  her.  Lydia's  heart  was  racing. 
She  had  never  felt  such  excitement  in  her  life.  It  seemed 
to  her  she  should  never  get  her  breath  again. 

"  What's  the  matter?  "  said  Jeff.      "  Father  all  right?  " 

"  She's  going  to  run  away  with  Reardon,"  said  Lydia, 
her  teeth  clicking  on  the  words  and  biting  some  of  them 
in  two.  "  He  went  this  afternoon.  They're  going  to 
meet." 

"  How  do  you  know?  " 

Neither  of  them,  in  the  course  of  their  quick  sentences, 
mentioned  Esther's  name. 


450  THE  PRISONER 

"  Madame  Beattie  told  me.  Look  over  by  that  truck. 
Don't  let  her  see  you." 

Jeff  turned  slightly  and  saw  the  figure  by  the  truck. 

"  She's  going  to  take  this  train,"  said  Lydia.  "  She's 
going  to  Reardon.  O  Jeff,  it's  wicked." 

Lydia  had  never  thought  much  about  things  that  were 
wicked.  Either  they  were  brave  things  to  do  and  you 
did  them  if  you  wanted  to,  or  they  were  underhand,  hideous 
things  and  then  you  didn't  want  to  do  them.  But  sud 
denly  Esther  seemed  to  her  something  floating,  tossed  ar.d 
driven  to  be  caught  up  and  saved  from  being  swamped 
by  what  seas  she  knew  not.  Jeff  walked  over  to  the  dark 
figure  by  the  truck.  Whether  he  had  expected  it  to  be 
Esther  he  could  not  have  said,  but  even  as  it  shrank  from 
him  he  knew. 

"  Come,"  said  he.     "  Come  home  with  me." 

Esther  stood  perfectly  silent  like  a  shrinking  wild  thing 
endowed  with  a  protective  catalepsy. 

"  Esther,"  said  he,  "  I  know  where  you're  going.  You 
mustn't  go.  You  sha'n't.  Come  home  with  me." 

And  as  she  did  not  move  or  answer  he  put  his  arm 
through  hers  and  guided  her  away.  Just  beyond  the 
corner  of  the  station  in  a  back  eddy  of  solitude,  she  flung 
him  off  and  darted  three  or  four  steps  obliquely  before  he 
caught  her  up  and  held  her.  Lydia,  standing  in  the 
shadow,  her  heart  beating  hard,  heard  his  unmoved  voice. 

"Esther,  you're  not  afraid  of  me?  Come  home  with 
me.  I  won't  touch  you  if  you'll  promise  to  come.  I  can't 
let  you  go.  I  can't.  It  would  be  the  worst  thing  that 
ever  happened  to  you." 

"  How  do  you  know,"  she  called,  in  a  high  hysterical 
voice,  "where  I'm  going?" 

"  You  were  going  with  somebody  you  mustn't  go  with," 
said  Jeff.  "  We  won't  talk  about  him.  If  he  were  here 


THE  PRISONER  451 

I  shouldn't  touch  him.  He's  only  a  fool.  And  it's  your 
fault  if  you're  going.  But  you  mustn't  go." 

"  I  am  going,"  said  Esther,  "  to  New  York,  and  I  have 
a  perfect  right  to.  I  shall  spend  a  few  days  and  get 
rested.  Anybody  that  tells  you  anything  else  tells  lies." 

"  The  train  is  coming,"  said  Jeff.  "  Stand  here,  if  you 
won't  walk  away  with  me,  and  we'll  let  it  go." 

She  tried  again  to  wrench  herself  free,  but  she  could 
not.  Lydia,  standing  in  the  shadow,  felt  a  passionate 
sympathy.  He  was  kind,  Lydia  saw,  he  was  compelling, 
but  if  he  could  have  told  the  distracted  creature  he 
had  something  to  offer  her  beyond  the  bare  protection  of 
an  honourable  intent,  then  she  might  have  seen  another 
gate  open  besides  the  one  that  led  nowhere.  Almost,  at 
that  moment,  Lydia  would  have  had  him  sorry  enough  to 
put  his  arms  about  her  and  offer  the  semblance  of  love  that 
is  divinest  sympathy.  The  train  stopped  for  its  appointed 
minutes  and  went  on. 

"  Come,"  said  Jeff,  "  now  we'll  go  home." 

She  turned  and  walked  with  him  to  the  corner.  There 
she  swerved. 

"  No,"  said  Jeff,  "  you're  coming  with  me.  That's  the 
place  for  you.  They'll  be  good  to  you,  all  of  them. 
They're  awfully  decent.  I'll  be  decent,  too.  You  sha'n't 
feel  you've  been  jailed.  Only  you  can't  walk  off  and  be 
a  prisoner  to  —  him.  Things  sha'n't  be  hard  for  you. 
They  shall  be  easier." 

Lydia,  behind,  could  believe  he  was  going  on  in  this 
broken  flow  of  words  to  soothe  her,  reassure  her.  "  Oh," 
Lydia  wanted  to  call  to  him,  "  make  love  to  her  if  you  can. 
I  don't  care.  Anything  you  want  to  do  I'll  stand  by,  if 
it  kills  me.  Haven't  I  said  I'd  die  for  you  ?  " 

But  at  that  moment  of  high  excitement  Lydia  didn't 
believe  anything  would  kill  her,  even  seeing  Jeff  walk  away 


452  THE  PRISONER 

from  her  with  this  little  wisp  of  wrong  desires  to  hold  and 
cherish. 

Jeff  took  Esther  up  the  winding  path,  opened  the  door 
and  led  her  into  the  library  where  his  father  sat  yawn 
ing.  Lydia  slipped  round  the  back  way  to  the  kitchen 
and  took  off  her  hat  and  coat. 

"  Cold !  "  she  said  to  Mary  Nellen,  to  explain  her  com 
ing,  and  warmed  her  hands  a  moment  before  she  went  into 
the  front  hall  and  put  her  things  away. 

"  Father,"  said  Jeff,  with  a  loud  cheerfulness  that 
sounded  fatuous  in  his  own  ears,  "  here's  Esther.  She's 
come  to  stay." 

The  colonel  got  on  his  feet  and  advanced  with  his  genial 
courtesy  and  outstretched  hand.  But  Esther  stood  like  a 
stone  and  did  not  touch  the  hand.  Anne  came  in,  at 
that  moment,  Lydia  following.  Anne  had  caught  Jeff's 
introduction  and  looked  frankly  disconcerted.  But  Lydia 
marched  straight  up  to  Esther. 

"  I've  always  been  hateful  to  you,"  she  said,  "  when 
ever  I've  seen  you.  I'm  not  so  hateful  now.  And  Anne's 
a  dear.  Farvie's  lovely.  We'll  all  do  everything  we  can 
to  make  it  nice  for  you." 

Jeff  had  been  fumbling  at  the  back  of  Esther's  veil 
and  Anne  now,  seeing  some  strange  significance  in  the 
moment,  put  her  quick  fingers  to  work.  The  veil  came 
off,  and  Esther  stood  there,  white,  stark,  more  tragic 
than  she  had  ever  looked  in  all  the  troubles  of  her  life. 
The  colonel  gave  a  little  exclamation  of  sorrow  over  her 
and  drew  up  the  best  chair  to  the  fire,  and  Anne  pushed 
back  the  lamp  on  the  table  so  that  its  light  should  not 
fall  directly  on  her  face.  Then  there  were  commonplace 
questions  and  answers.  Where  had  Jeff  been?  How 
many  miles  did  he  think  he  had  walked  ?  And  in  the  midst 
of  the  talk,  while  Lydia  was  upstairs  patting  pillows  and 


THE  PRISONER  453 

lighting  the  fire  in  the  spare-chamber,  Esther  suddenly 
began  to  cry  in  a  low,  dispirited  way,  no  passion  in  it 
but  only  discouragement  and  physical  overthrow.  These 
were  real  enough  tears  and  they  hurt  Jeff  to  the  last 
point  of  nervous  irritation. 

"  Don't,"  he  said,  and  then  stopped  while  Anne  knelt 
beside  her  and,  in  a  rhythmic  way,  began  to  rub  one  of  her 
hands,  and  the  colonel  stared  into  the  fire. 

"  Perhaps  if  you  went  upstairs !  "  Anne  said  to  her 
gently.  "  I  could  really  rub  you  if  you  were  in  bed  and 
Lydia'll  bring  up  something  nice  and  hot." 

"  No,  no,"  moaned  Esther.  "  You're  keeping  me  a 
prisoner.  You  must  let  me  go."  Then,  as  Jeff,  walking 
back  and  forth,  came  within  range  of  her  glance,  she 
flashed  at  him,  "  You've  no  right  to  keep  me  prisoner." 

"  No,"  said  Jeff  miserably,  "  maybe  not.  But  I've  got 
to  make  sure  you're  safe.  Stay  to-night,  Esther,  and  to 
morrow,  when  you're  rested,  we'll  talk  it  over." 

"  To-morrow,"  she  muttered,  "  it  will  be  too  late." 

"  That's  it,"  said  Jeff,  understanding  that  it  would  be 
too  late  for  her  to  meet  Reardon.  "  That's  what  I  mean 
it  shall  be." 

Anne  got  on  her  feet  and  held  out  a  hand  to  her. 

"  Come,"  she  said.     "  Let's  go  upstairs." 

Esther  shrank  all  over  her  body  and  gave  a  glance  at 
Jeff.  It  was  a  cruel  glance,  full  of  a  definite  repudiation. 

"  No,  no,"  she  said  again,  in  a  voice  where  fear  was 
intentionally  dominant. 

It  stung  him  to  a  miserable  sorrow  for  her  and  a  hurt 
pride  of  his  own. 

"  For  God's  sake,  no !  "  he  said.  "  You're  going  to 
be  by  yourself,  poor  child !  Run  away  with  Anne." 

So  Esther  rose  unwillingly,  and  Anne  took  her  up  to 
the  spacious  chamber  where  firelight  was  dancing  on  the 


454  THE  PRISONER 

wall  and  Ljdia  had  completed  all  sorts  of  hospitable 
offices.  Lydia  was  there  still,  shrinking  shyly  into  the 
background,  as  having  no  means  of  communication  with 
an  Esther  to  whom  she  had  been  hostile.  But  Esther 
turned  them  both  out  firmly,  if  with  courtesy. 

"  Please  go,"  she  said  to  Anne.     "  Please  let  me  be." 

This  seemed  to  Anne  quite  natural.  She  knew  she 
herself,  if  she  were  troubled,  could  get  over  it  best 
alone. 

"  Mayn't  I  come  back  ?  "  she  asked.  "  When  you're  in 
bed?"  * 

"No,"  Esther  said.  "I  am  so  tired  I  shall  sleep. 
You're  very  kind.  Good  night." 

She  saw  them  to  the  door  with  determination  even,  and 
they  went  downstairs  and  sat  in  the  dining-room  in  an 
excited  silence,  because  it  seemed  to  them  Jeff  might  want 
to  see  his  father  and  talk  over  things.  But  Jeff  and 
his  father  were  sitting  on  opposite  sides  of  the  table,  the 
colonel  pretending  to  read  and  Jeff  with  his  elbows  on  the 
table,  his  head  resting  on  his  hands.  How  was  he 
to  finish  what  he  had  begun?  For  she  hated  him,  he  be 
lieved,  with  a  childish  hatred  of  the  discomfort  he  had 
brought  her.  If  there  were  some  hot  betrayal  of  the 
blood  that  had  driven  her  to  Reardon  he  almost  thought, 
despite  Addington  and  its  honesties  and  honours,  he  would 
not  lift  his  hand  to  keep  her.  Addington  was  very  strong 
in  him  that  night,  the  old  decent  loyalties  to  the  edifice 
men  and  women  have  built  up  to  protect  themselves  from 
the  beast  in  them.  Yet  how  would  it  have  stood  the  as 
sault  of  honest  passion,  sheer  human  longing  knocking 
at  its  walls?  If  she  could  but  love  a  man  at  last!  but 
this  was  no  more  love  than  the  puerile  effort  of  a  meagre 
discontent  to  make  itself  more  safe,  more  closely  cherished, 
more  luxuriously  served. 


THE  PRISONER  455 

"  Father,"  said  he  at  last,  breaking  the  silence  where 
the  clock  ticked  and  the  fire  stirred. 

"  Yes,"  said  the  colonel.  He  did  not  put  down  his  book 
or  move  his  finger  on  it.  He  meant,  to  the  last  line  of 
precaution,  to  invite  Jeff's  confidence. 

"  Whatever  she  does,"  said  Jeff,  "  I'm  to  blame  for  it." 

"  Don't  blame  3^ourself  any  more,"  the  colonel  said. 
"  We  won't  blame  anybody." 

He  did  not  even  venture  to  ask  what  Esther  would  be 
likely  to  do. 

"  I  don't  understand  — "  said  Jeff,  and  then  paused  and 
the  sentence  was  never  finished.  But  what  he  did  not  un 
derstand  was  the  old  problem:  how  accountability  could 
be  exacted  from  the  irresponsible,  how  an  ascetic  loyalty 
to  law  could  be  demanded  of  a  woman  who  was  nothing 
but  a  sweet  bouquet  of  primitive  impulses,  flowered  out  of 
youth  and  natural  appetites.  He  saw  what  she  was  giving 
up  with  Reardon:  luxury,  a  kindly  and  absolutely  honest 
devotion.  If  she  went  to  him  it  would  be  to  what  she 
called  happiness.  If  he  kept  her  out  of  the  radius  of  dis 
approval,  she  might  never  feel  a  shadow  of  regret.  But 
Reardon  would  feel  the  shadow.  Jeff  knew  him  well 
enough  to  believe  that.  It  would  be  the  old  question  of 
revolt  against  the  edifice  men  have  built.  You  thought 
you  could  storm  it,  and  it  would  capitulate ;  but  when  the 
winter  rigours  came,  when  passion  died  and  self  got 
shrunken  to  a  meagre  thing,  you  would  seek  the  shelter 
of  even  that  cold  courtyard. 

"  Yes,"  he  said  aloud,  "  I've  got  to  do  it." 

All  that  evening  they  sat  silent,  the  four  of  them,  as 
if  waiting  for  an  arrival,  an  event.  At  eleven  Anne  came 
in. 

"  I've  been  up  and  listened,"  she  said.  "  She's  per 
fectly  quiet.  She  must  be  asleep." 


456  THE  PRISONER 

Jeff  rose. 

"  Come,  father,"  he  said.  "  You'll  be  drowsy  as  an 
owl  to-morrow.  We'd  better  get  up  early,  all  of  us." 

"  Yes,"  said  Anne.  She  knew  what  he  meant.  They 
had,  somehow,  a  distasteful,  puzzling  piece  of  work  cut 
out  for  them.  They  must  be  up  to  cope  with  this  strange 
Esther. 

Lydia  fell  asleep  almost,  as  the  cosy  saying  goes,  as 
soon  as  her  head  touched  the  pillow.  She  was  dead  tired. 
But  in  what  seemed  to  her  the  middle  of  the  night,  she 
heard  a  little  noise,  and  flew  out  of  bed,  still  dazed  and 
blinking.  She  thought  it  was  the  click  of  a  door.  But 
Esther's  door  was  shut,  the  front  door,  too,  for  she  crept 
into  the  hall  and  peered  over  the  railing.  She  went  to  the 
hall  window  and  looked  out  on  the  dark  shrubbery  above 
the  snow,  and  the  night  was  still  and  the  scene  so  kind  it 
calmed  her.  But  she  could  not  see,  beyond  the  shrubbery, 
the  black  figure  running  softly  down  the  walk.  Lydia 
went  back  to  bed,  and  when  the  "  midnight  "  hooted  she 
drew  the  clothes  closer  about  her  ears  and  thought  how 
glad  she  was  to  be  so  comfortable.  It  was  not  until  the 
next  morning  that  she  knew  the  "  midnight  "  had  carried 
Esther  with  it. 


XL 

It  was  strangely  neutral,  the  hue  of  the  moment  when 
they  discovered  she  had  gone.  They  had  not  called  her  in 
the  morning,  but  Anne  had  listened  many  times  at  the 
door,  and  Lydia  had  prepared  a  choice  tray  for  her,  and 
Mary  Nellen  tried  to  keep  the  coals  at  the  right  ardour  for 
toasting.  Jeff  had  stayed  in  the  house,  walking  uneasily 
about,  and  at  a  little  after  ten  he  came  out  of  his  chair 
as  if  he  suddenly  recognised  the  folly  of  staying  in  it  so 
apathetically. 

"  Go  up,"  he  said  to  Lydia.  "  Knock.  Then  try  the 
door." 

Lydia  got  no  answer  to  her  knock,  and  the  door 
yielded  to  her.  There  was  the  bed  untouched,  on  the 
hearth  the  cold  ashes  of  last  night's  fire.  She  stood 
stupidly  looking  until  Jeff,  listening  at  the  foot  of  the 
stairs,  called  to  her  and  then  himself  ran  up.  He  read 
the  chill  order  of  the  room  and  his  eyes  came  back  to 
Lydia's  face. 

"  Oh,"  said  Lydia,  "  will  he  be  good  to  her?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Jeff,  "  he'll  be  good  enough.  That  isn't  it. 
What  a  fool  I  am !  I  ought  to  have  watched  her.  But 
Esther  wasn't  daring.  She  never  did  anything  by  her 
self.  I  couldn't  get  to  New  York  now  —  "  He  paused  to 
calculate. 

He  ran  downstairs,  and  without  speaking  to  his  father, 
on  an  irrational  impulse,  over  to  Madam  Bell's.  There  he 
came  unprepared  upon  the  strangest  sight  he  haJd  ever 

seen   in   Addirigton.     Sophy,   her   cynical,   pert   face   ac- 

457 


458  THE  PRISONER 

tually  tied  up  into  alarm,  red,  creased  and  angry,  was 
standing  in  the  library,  and  Madam  Bell,  in  a  wadded 
wrapper  and  her  nightcap,  was  counting  out  money  into 
her  trembling  hand.  To  Sophy,  it  was  as  terrifying  as 
receiving  money  from  the  dead.  She  had  always  looked 
upon  Madam  Bell  as  virtually  dead,  and  here  she  was 
ordering  her  to  quit  the  house  and  giving  her  a  month's 
wages,  with  all  the  practicality  of  a  shrewd  accountant. 
Madam  Bell  was  an  amazing  person  to  look  at  in  her 
wadded  gown  and  felt  slippers,  with  the  light  of  life 
once  more  flickering  over  her  parchment  face. 

"  Rhoda  Knox  is  gone,"  she  announced  to  Jeff,  the 
moment  he  walked  in.  "  I  sent  her  yesterday.  This  girl 
is  going  as  soon  as  she  can  pack." 

Jeff  gave  Sophy  a  directing  nod  and  she  slipped  out  of 
the  room.  She  was  as  afraid  of  him  as  of  the  masterful 
dead  woman  in  the  quilted  wrapper.  Anything  might 
happen  since  the  resurrection  of  Madam  Bell. 

"Where  is  she?"  asked  Jeff,  when  he  had  closed  the 
door. 

"Esther?"  said  Madam  Bell.  "Gone.  She's  taken 
every  stitch  she  had  that  was  worth  anything.  Martha 
told  me  she  was  going  for  good." 

"Who's  Martha?     Oh,  yes,  yes  —  Madame  Beattie." 

The  light  faded  for  an  instant  from  the  parchment  face. 

"  Don't  tell  me,"  she  sharply  bade  him,  "  Esther's  com 
ing  back?  " 

"  No,"  said  Jeff.     "  If  she  does,  she  shall  come  to  me." 

He  went  away  without  another  word,  and  Madam  Bell 
called  after  him : 

"  Tell  Amabel  to  look  round  and  get  me  some  help.  I 
won't  have  one  of  these  creatures  that  have  been  ruling 
here  • —  except  the  cook.  Tell  Amabel  to  come  and  see 
me." 


THE  PRISONER  459 

Jeff  did  remember  to  do  that,  but  not  until  he  had 
telephoned  New  York,  and  got  his  meagre  fact.  One 
of  the  boats  sailing  that  morning  had,  among  its  pas 
sengers,  J.  L.  Reardon  and  Mrs.  Reardon.  He  did  not  in 
quire  further.  All  that  day  he  stayed  at  home,  foolishly, 
he  knew,  lest  some  message  come  for  him,  not  speaking  of 
his  anxiety  even  to  Lydia,  and  very  much  let  alone.  That 
Lydia  must  have  given  his  father  some  palliating  ex 
planation  he  guessed,  for  when  Jeff  said  to  him: 

"  Father,  Esther's  gone  abroad,"  the  colonel  answered 
soothingly : 

"  Yes,  my  son,  I  know.     It  is  in  every  way  best." 

The  next  week  came  the  election,  and  Jeff  had  not  got 
into  the  last  grip  of  contest.  He  had  meant  to  do  some 
persuasive  speaking  for  Alston.  He  thought  he  could 
rake  in  all  Madame  Beattie's  contingent,  now  that  she  was 
away,  still  leaving  them  so  friendly.  But  he  was  dull  and 
absent-minded.  Esther's  going  had  been  a  defeat  another 
braver,  cleverer  man,  he  believed,  need  not  have  suffered. 
At  Lydia  he  had  hardly  looked  since  the  day  of  Esther's 
going.  To  them  all  he  was  a  closed  book,  tight-lipped,  a 
mask  of  brooding  care.  Lydia  thought  she  understood. 
He  was  raging  over  what  he  might  have  done.  Nothing 
was  going  to  make  Lydia  rage,  she  determined.  She  had 
settled  down  into  the  even  swing  of  her  one  task:  to  help 
him  out,  to  watch  him,  above  all,  whatever  the  emer 
gency,  to  be  ready. 

Once,  when  Jeff  was  trying  to  drag  his  flagging  ener 
gies  into  election  work  again,  he  met  Andrea,  and  stopped 
to  say  he  would  be  down  at  Mill  End  that  night. 
But  Andrea  seemed,  while  keeping  his  old  fealty,  be 
tokened  by  shining  eyes  and  the  most  open  smiles,  to  care 
very  little  about  him  in  a  political  capacity.  He  even 


460  THE  PRISONER 

soothingly  suggested  that  he  should  not  come.  Better 
not,  Andrea  said.  Too  much  work  for  nothing.  They 
knew  already  what  to  do.  They  understood. 

"Understand  what?"  Jeff  asked  him. 

They  had  been  told  before  the  signora  went,  said  Andrea. 
She  had  explained  it  all.  They  would  vote,  every  man  of 
them.  They  knew  how. 

"  It's  easy  enough  to  learn  how,"  said  Jeff  impatiently. 
"  The  thing  is  to  vote  for  the  right  man.  That's  what 
I'm  coming  down  for." 

Andrea  backed  away,  deferentially  implying  that  Jeff 
would  be  most  welcome  always,  but  that  it  was  a  pity  he 
should  be  put  to  so  much  pains.  And  he  did  go,  and  found 
only  a  few  scattering  listeners.  The  others,  he  learned 
afterward,  were  peaceably  at  a  singing  club  of  their  own. 
They  had  not,  Jeff  thought,  with  mortification,  considered 
him  of  enough  importance  to  listen  to. 

Weedon  Moore,  in  these  last  days,  seemed  to  be  scoring ; 
at  least  circumstance  gave  him  his  own  head  and  he  was 
much  in  evidence.  He  spoke  a  great  deal,  flamboyantly, 
on  the  wrongs  suffered  by  labour,  and  his  own  consecration 
to  the  holy  joy  of  righting  them.  He  spoke  in  English 
wholly,  because  Andrea,  with  picturesque  misery,  had  re 
gretted  his  own  inability  to  interpret.  Andrea's  throat 
hurt  him  now,  he  said.  He  had  been  forbidden  to  inter 
pret  any  more.  Weedie  mourned  the  defection  of  Andrea. 
It  had,  he  felt,  made  a  difference,  not  only  in  the  size 
but  the  responsiveness  of  his  audiences.  Sometimes  he 
even  felt  they  came  to  be  amused,  or  to  lull  his  possible 
suspicion  of  having  lost  their  old  allegiance.  But  they 
came. 

That  year  every  man  capable  of  moving  on  two  legs 
or  of  being  supported  into  a  carriage,  turned  out  to  vote. 
Something  had  been  done  by  infection.  Jeff  had  done  it 


THE  PRISONER  461 

through  his  fervour,  and  Madame  Beattie  a  thousand 
times  more  by  pure  dramatic  eccentricity.  People  were 
at  least  amusedly  anxious  to  see  how  it  was  going,  and  old 
Addingtonians  felt  it  a  cheerful  duty  to  stand  by  Alston 
Choate.  The  Mill  Enders  voted  late,  all  of  them,  so  late 
that  Weedon  Moore,  who  kept  track  of  their  activities, 
wondered  if  they  meant  to  vote  at  all.  But  they  did 
vote,  they  also  to  the  last  man,  and  a  rumour  crept  about 
that  some  irregularity  was  connected  with  the  ballot.  But 
whatever  they  did,  it  was  by  concerted  action,  after  a 
definite  design.  Weedon  Moore,  an  agitated  figure,  meet 
ing  Jeff,  was  so  worried  and  excited  by  it  that  he  had  to 
cackle  his  anxiety. 

"What  are  they  cloing? "  he  said,  stopping  before 
Jeff  on  the  pavement.  "  They've  got  up  some  damned 
thing  or  other.  It's  illegal,  Blake.  I  give  you  my  word 
it's  illegal." 

"  What  is  it  ?  "  Jeff  inquired,  looking  down  on  Weedie 
with  something  of  the  feeling  once  popularly  supposed 
to  be  the  desert  of  toads  before  that  warty  personality  had 
been  advertised  as  beneficent  to  gardens. 

"  I  don't  know  what  it  is,"  said  Moore,  almost  weeping. 
"  But  it's  some  damned  trick,  and  I'll  be  even  with  them." 

"  If  they  elect  you  —  "  Jeff  began  coldly. 

"  They  won't  elect  me,"  said  Moore,  from  his  general 
overthrow.  "  Six  months  ago  every  man  Jack  of  'em  was 
promised  to  me.  Somebody's  tampered  with  'em.  I  don't 
know  whether  it's  you  or  Madame  Beattie.  She  led  me 
on,  a  couple  of  weeks  ago,  into  telling  her  what  I  knew 
about  trickery  at  the  polls  —  " 

"All  you  knew?"  Jeff  could  not  resist  saying.  "All 
you  know  about  trickery,  Weedie?" 

"  As  a  lawyer,"  said  Weedie,  "  I  told  her  about  writing 
in  names.  I  told  her  about  stickers  —  " 


THE  PRISONER 

"  What  did  she  want  to  know  for  ?  "  Jeff  asked.  He, 
too,  was  roused  to  sudden  startled  interest. 

66  You  know  as  much  as  I  do.  She  was  interested  in 
my  election,  said  she  was  speaking  for  me,  wanted  to  know 
how  we  managed  to  crowd  in  an  extra  name  not  on  the 
ballot.  Had  heard  of  that.  It  worried  her,  she  said. 
Blake,  that  old  woman  is  as  clever  as  the  devil." 

Jeff  made  his  way  past  the  fuming  candidate  anid 
walked  on,  speculating.  Madame  Beattie  had  assuredly 
done  something.  She  had  left  the  inheritance  of  her  un 
leashed  energy,  in  some  form,  behind  her. 

He  did  not  go  home  that  late  afternoon  and  in  the  early 
evening  strolled  about  the  streets,  once  meeting  Choate 
and  passing  on  Weedie's  agonised  forecast.  Alston  was 
mildly  interested.  He  thought  she  couldn't  have  done 
anything  effective.  Her  line  seemed  to  be  the  wildly 
dramatic.  Stage  tricks  wouldn't  tip  the  scales,  when  it 
came  to  balloting.  Whatever  she  had  done,  Alston,  in  his 
heart,  hoped  it  would  defeat  him,  and  leave  him  to  the  rich 
enjoyment  of  his  play-day  office  and  his  books.  His 
mother  could  realise  then  that  he  had  done  his  best,  and 
leave  him  to  a  serene  progress  toward  middle  age.  But 
when  he  got  as  far  as  that  he  remembered  that  his  defeat 
would  magnify  Weedon  Moore  and  miserably  concluded 
he  ought  rather  to  suffer  the  martyrdom  of  office.  Would 
Anne  like  him  if  he  were  defeated?  He,  too,  was  wander 
ing  about  the  town,  and  the  bravado  of  his  suit  to  her  came 
back  to  him.  It  was  easy  to  seek  her  out,  it  seemed  so 
natural  to  be  with  her,  so  strange  to  live  without  her. 
Laughing  a  little,  though  nervously,  at  himself,  he  walked 
up  the  winding  pathway  to  her  house  and  asked  for  her. 
No,  he  would  not  come  in,  if  she  would  be  so  good  as  to 
come  to  him.  Anne  came,  the  warmth  of  the  firelight  on 
her  cheeks  and  hands.  She  had  been  sitting  by  the  hearth 


THE  PRISONER  463 

reading  to  the  colonel.  Alston  took  her  hands  and  drew 
her  out  to  him. 

"  It's  not  very  cold,"  he  said.  "  One  minute,  Anne. 
Won't  you  love  me  if  I  am  not  a  mayor?  " 

Anne  didn't  answer.  She  stood  there,  her  hands  in  his, 
and  Alston  thought  she  was  the  stillest  thing  he  had  ever 
seen. 

"  You  might  be  a  snow  maiden,"  he  said.  "  Or  an  ice 
maiden.  Or  marble.  Anne,  I've  got  to  melt  you  if  you're 
snow  and  ice.  Are  you?"  Then  all  he  could  think  of 
was  the  old  foolishness,  "  Darling  Anne." 

When  he  kissed  her,  immediately  upon  this,  it  was  in 
quite  a  commonplace  way,  as  if  they  were  parting  for 
an  hour  or  so  and  had  the  habit  of  easy  kissing. 

"  Why  don't  you  speak,"  said  Alston,  in  a  rage  of 
delight  in  her,  "  you  little  dumb  person,  you?  " 

Anne  c7id  better.  She  got  her  hands  out  of  his  and 
lifted  them  to  draw  his  face  again  to  hers. 

"  How  silly  we  are,"  said  Anne.  "  And  the  door  is 
swinging  open,  and  it'll  let  all  the  cold  in  on  Farvie's 
feet." 

Alston  said  a  few  more  things  of  his  owrn,  wild  things 
he  was  surprised  at  and  forgot  immediately  and  that  she 
was  always  to  remember,  and  they  really  parted  now  with 
the  ceremonial  of  easy  kissing.  But  both  of  them  had 
forgotten  about  mayors. 

Jeff,  with  the  returns  to  take  her,  that  night  before 
going  home  ran  in  to  Amabel.  He  believed  he  ought  to 
be  the  first  to  tell  her.  She  would  be  disappointed,  for 
after  all  Weedon  Moore  was  her  candidate.  As  he  got 
to  the  top  of  the  steps  Moore  came  scuttling  out  at  the 
front  door  and  Jeff  stood  aside  to  let  him  pass.  He 
walked  in,  calling  to  her  as  he  went.  She  did  not  answer, 
but  he  found  her  in  the  library,  standing,  a  figure  of 


464  THE  PRISONER 

quivering  dignity,  of  majesty  hurt  and  humbled.  When 
she  saw  him  Amabel's  composure  broke,  and  she  gave  a 
sob  or  two,  and  then  twice  said  his  name. 

"What  is  it?  "said  Jeff. 

He  went  to  her  and  she  faced  him,  the  colour  running 
over  her  face. 

"  That  man  —  "  she  said,  and  stopped. 

"Moore?" 

"Yes.     He  has   insulted  me." 

"  Moore?  "  he  repeated. 

"  He  has  asked  me  —  Jeff,  I  am  a  woman  of  sixty  and 
over  —  he  has  asked  me  to  marry  him." 

"  Wait  a  minute,"  said  Jeff.  "  I've  forgotten  some 
thing." 

He  wheeled  away  from  her  and  ran  out  and  down  the 
path  after  Weedie  Moore.  Weedie's  legs,  being  short,  had 
not  covered  ground  very  fast.  Jeff  had  no  trouble  in  over 
taking  him. 

In  less  than  ten  minutes,  he  walked  into  Miss  Amabel's 
library  again,  a  little  breathless,  with  eyes  shining  some 
what  and  his  nostrils  big,  it  might  be  thought,  from  haste. 
She  had  composed  herself,  and  he  knew  her  confidence  was 
neither  to  be  repeated  nor  enlarged  upon.  There  she  sat 
awaiting  him,  dignity  embodied,  a  little  more  tense  than 
usual  and  her  head  held  high.  All  her  ancestors  might 
have  been  assembled  about  her,  invisible  but  exacting,  and 
she  accounting  to  them  for  the  indignity  that  had  befallen 
her,  and  assuring  them  it  was  to  her,  as  it  would  have  been 
to  them,  incredible.  She  was  even  a  little  stiff  with  Jeff 
at  first,  because  she  had  told  him  what  she  would  naturally 
have  hidden,  like  a  disgraceful  secret.  Jeff  understood 
her  perfectly.  She  had  met  Weedon  Moore  on  philan 
thropic  grounds,  an  equal  so  long  as  they  were  both 
avowed  philanthropists.  But  when  the  little  man  aspired 


THE  PRISONER  465 

unduly  and  ventured  to  pull  at  the  hem  of  her  maiden 
gown,  Christian  tolerance  went  by  the  board  and  she  was 
Addington  and  he  was  Weedon  Moore.  She  would  never 
be  able  to  summon  Christian  virtues  to  the  point  of  a  com 
munity  of  interests  with  him  again.  Jeff  understood 
Moore,  too,  Moore  who  was  probably  on  his  way  home  at 
the  moment  getting  himself  together  after  a  disconcerting 
bodily  shock  such  as  he  had  not  encountered  since  their 
old  school  days  when  he  had  done  "  everything  —  and  told 
of  it  ".  He  had  counted  on  her  sympathy  over  his  defeat, 
and  chosen  that  moment  to  make  his  incredible  plea. 

"  Did  you  do  what  you  had  forgotten  ?  "  Amabel  asked. 

"  Yes,"  said  Jeff  glibly.  "  I  did  it  quite  easily.  I've 
come  to  tell  you  the  news.  Perhaps  you  know  it  already. 
Alston  Choate's  elected." 

"  Yes,"  said  Miss  Amabel,  in  a  stately  manner.  "  I  had 
just  heard  it." 

"  I'm  going  round  there,"  said  Jeff,  "  to  congratulate 
his  mother.  It's  her  campaign,  you  know.  He  never'd 
have  run  if  it  hadn't  been  for  her." 

"  I  didn't  know  Mrs.  Choate  had  any  such  interest 
in  local  affairs,"  said  Amabel. 

She  was  aware  Jeff  was  smoothing  her  down,  ruffled 
feather  after  feather,  and  she  was  pathetically  grate 
ful.  If  she  hadn't  kept  a  strong  grip  on  herself,  her  lip 
would  have  been  quivering  still. 

"  In  a  way  she's  not.  She  doesn't  care  about  Adding 
ton  as  we  do,  but  she  hates  to  see  old  traditions  go  to 
the  dogs.  I've  an  idea  she'll  stand  behind  Alston  and 
really  run  the  show.  Put  on  your  bonnet  and  come  with 
me.  It's  a  shame  to  stay  in  the  house  a  night  like  this." 

She  still  knew  his  purpose  and  acquiesced  in  it.  He 
hated  to  leave  her  to  solitary  thoughts  of  the  indignity 
Moore  had  offered  her,  and  also  she  hated  to  be  left.  She 


466  THE  PRISONER 

put  on  her  thick  cloak  and  her  bonnet  —  there  were  no 
assumptions  with  Miss  Amabel  that  she  wasn't  over  sixty 
—  and  they  went  forth.  But  Mrs.  Choate  was  not  at 
home,  nor  was  Mary.  The  maid  thought  they  had  gone 
down  town  for  the  return.  Jeff  told  her  Mr.  Choate  was 
to  be  mayor  —  no  one  in  Addington  seemed  to  pay  much 
attention  to  the  rest  of  the  ticket  that  year  —  and  she 
returned  quite  prosaically,  "  God  save  us !  " 

"  Save  us  from  Alston?  "  asked  Jeff,  as  they  went  away, 
and  Miss  Amabel  forgot  Moore  and  laughed. 

They  went  on  down  town  with  the  purpose  of  seeing 
life,  as  Jeff  said,  and  got  into  a  surge  of  shiny-eyed  Mill 
Enders  who  looked  to  Jeff  as  if  they  were  commiserating 
him  although  it  was  his  candidate  that  won.  Andrea,  in 
deed,  in  the  moment  of  their  meeting  and  parting  almost 
wept  over  him.  And  face  to  face  they  met  Lydia. 

"  I've  lost  Farvie,"  she  said,  "  and  Anne.  Can't  I  come 
with  you  ?  " 

So  they  went  on  together,  Lydia  much  excited  and  Miss 
Amabel  puzzled,  in  her  wistful  way,  at  finding  social  Ad 
dington  and  working  Addington  shoulder  to  shoulder  in 
their  extraordinary  interest  in  the  election  though  never 
in  the  common  roads  of  life. 

"  But  why  the  deuce,"  said  Jeff,  "  Andrea  and  his  gang 
look  so  mournful  I  can't  see." 

"Why,"  said  Lydia,  "don't  you  know?  They  voted 
for  you,  and  their  votes  were  thrown  out." 

"For  me?" 

"  Yes,  Madame  Beattie  told  them  to.  She'd  planned  it 
before  she  went  away,  but  somehow  it  fell  through.  They 
were  to  put  stickers  on  the  ballot,  but  at  the  last  the 
stickers  scared  them,  and  they  just  wrote  in  your  name." 

"  Lydia,"  said  Jeff,  "  you're  making  this  up." 

"Oh,  no,   I'm  not,"   said  Lydia.     "Mr.    Choate   told 


THE  PRISONER  467 

me.  I  knew  it  was  going  to  happen,  but  he's  just  told 
me  how  it  was.  They  wrote  '  Prisoner  Blake  '  in  all  kinds 
of  scrawls  and  skriggles.  They  didn't  know  they'd  got  to 
write  your  real  name.  I  call  it  a  joke  on  Madame 
Beattie." 

To  Lydia  it  looked  like  a  joke  on  herself  also,  though 
a  sorry  one.  She  thought  it  very  benevolent  of  Madame 
Beattie  to  have  prepared  such  a  dramatic  surprise,  and 
that  it  was  definite  ill-fortune  for  Jeff  to  have  missed  the 
full  effect  of  it.  But  the  earth  to  Lydia  was  a  flare 
of  dazzling  roads  all  leading  from  Jeff;  he  might  take 
any  one  of  them. 

To  Amabel  the  confusion  of  voting  was  a  matter  of  no 
interest,  and  Jeff  said  nothing.  Lydia  was  not  sure 
whether  he  had  even  really  heard.  Then  Amabel  said  if 
there  were  going  to  be  speeches  she  hardly  thought  she 
cared  for  them,  and  they  walked  home  with  her  and  left 
her  at  the  door,  though  not  before  she  had  put  a  kind 
hand  on  Jeff's  shoulder  and  told  him  in  that  way  how 
grateful  she  was  to  him.  After  she  had  gone  in  Jeff,  so 
curious  he  had  to  say  it  before  they  started  to  walk 
away,  turned  upon  Lydia. 

"  How  do  you  know  so  much  about  her  ?  "  he  began. 

"  Madame  Beattie  ?  We  used  to  talk  together,"  said 
Lydia  demurely. 

"  You  knew  her  confounded  plans  ?  " 

"  Some  of  them." 

"And  never  told?" 

"  They  were  secrets,"  said  Lydia.  "  Come,  let's  walk 
along." 

"  No,  no.  I  want  you  where  I  can  look  at  you,  so 
you  won't  do  any  romancing  about  that  old  enchantress. 
If  you  know  so  much,  tell  me  one  thing  more.  She's  gone. 
She  can't  hurt  you." 


468  THE  PRISONER 

"What  is  it?"  asked  Lydia. 

"What  did  she  tell  those  fellows  about  me?" 

"Andrea?" 

"  Andrea  and  his  gang.  To  make  them  treat  me  like 
a  Hindoo  god.  No,  I'll  tell  you  how  they  treated  me. 
As  savages  treat  the  first  white  man  they've  ever  seen 
till  they  find  he's  a  rotten  trader." 

"  Oh,"  said  Lydia,  "  it  can't  do  any  harm  to  tell  you 
that." 

"  Any  harm?  I  ought  to  have  known  it  from  the  first. 
Out  with  it." 

"  Well,  she  told  them  you  had  been  in  prison,  and  you 
were  sent  there  by  Weedon  Moore  and  his  party  —  " 

"His  party?     What  was  that?" 

"  Oh,  I  don't  know.  Anybody  can  have  a  party. 
Something  like  Tammany,  maybe.  You'd  been  sent  to 
prison  because  it  was  you  that  had  got  them  their  de 
cent  wages,  and  had  the  nice  little  houses  built  down  at 
Mill  End.  And  there  was  a  conspiracy  against  you,  and 
she  heard  of  it  and  came  over  to  tell  them  how  it 
was.  But  you  were  in  prison  because  you  stood  up  for  la 
bour." 

"  My  word !  "  said  Jeff.     "  And  they  believed  her." 

"  Anybody'd  believe  anything  from  Madame  Beattie," 
Lydia  said  positively.  "  She  told  them  lots  of  stories 
about  you,  lovely  stories.  Sometimes  she'd  tell  them  to 
me  afterward.  She  made  you  into  a  hero." 

"  Moses,"  said  Jeff,  "  leading  them  out  of  bondage." 

"  Yes.  Come,  we  can't  stand  here.  If  Miss  Amabel 
sees  us  she'll  think  we're  crazy." 

They  walked  down  the  path  and  out  between  the  stone 
pillars  where  he  had  met  Esther.  Jeff  remembered  it,  and 
out  of  his  wish  to  let  Lydia  into  his  mind  said,  as  they 
passed  into  the  street: 


THE  PRISONER  469 

"  I  have  heard  from  her." 

Lydia's  sudden  happiness  in  the  night  and  in  his  com 
pany  —  in  knowing,  too,  she  was  well  aware,  that  there 
was  no  Esther  near  —  saw  the  cup  dashed  from  her  lips. 
Jeff  didn't  wait  for  her  to  answer. 

"  From  the  boat,"  he  said.  "  It  was  very  short.  She 
was  with  him.  We  weren't  to  send  her  any  more  money. 
She  said  she  had  taken  his  name." 

"  How  can  she?  "  said  Lydia  stupidly.  "  She  couldn't 
marry  him." 

"  Maybe  she  thinks  she  can,"  said  Jeff.  He  was  willing 
to  keep  alive  her  unthinking  innocence.  It  was  not  the 
outcome  of  ignorance  that  cramps  and  stultifies.  He 
meant  Lydia  should  be  a  child  for  a  long  time.  "  Now, 
see.  Her  going  makes  it  possible  for  me  to  be  free  —  le 
gally,  I  mean.  When  I  can  marry,  Lydia  — "  He 
stopped  there.  They  were  walking  on  the  narrow  pave 
ment,  but  not  even  their  hands  touched.  "  Do  you  love 
me,"  Jeff  asked,  "  as  much  as  you  thought  ?  That  way, 
I  mean  ?  " 

"  Yes,"  said  Lydia.  "  But  I  know  what  you'd  like. 
Not  to  talk  about  it,  not  to  think  about  it  much,  but  take 
care  of  Farvie  —  and  you  write  —  and  both  of  us  work 
on  plays  —  and  sometime  — " 

"Yes,"    said   Jeff,    "sometime  —  " 

One  tremendous  desire,  of  all  the  desires  tumultuous 
in  him,  was  strongest.  If  Lydia  was  to  be  his  —  though 
already  she  seemed  supremely  his  in  all  the  shy  fealties  of 
the  moment  —  not  a  petal  of  the  flower  of  love  should  be 
lost  to  her.  She  should  find  them  all  dewy  and  unwithered 
in  her  bridal  crown.  There  should  not  be  a  kiss,  a  hot 
protestation,  the  tawdry  path  of  love  half  tasted  yet  long 
deferred.  Lydia  should,  for  the  present,  stay  a  child. 
His  one  dear  thought,  the  thought  that  made  him  feel  un- 


470  THE  PRISONER 

imaginably   free,   came  winging  to  him  like   a   bird  with 
messages. 

"  We  aren't,"  he  said,  "  going  to  be  prisoners,  either 
of  us." 

"  No,"  said  Lydia  soberly.  She  knew  by  her  talk  witH 
him  and  reading  what  he  had  imperfectly  written,  that  he 
meant  to  be  eternally  free  through  fulfilling  the  incompre 
hensible  paradox  of  binding  himself  to  the  law. 

"  We  aren't  going  to  be  downed  by  loving  each  other  so 
we  can't  stand  up  to  it  and  say  we'll  wait." 

"  I  can  stand  up  to  it,"  said  Lydia.  "  I  can  stand 
up  to  anything  —  for  you." 

"  I  don't  know,"  he  said,  "just  how  we're  coming  out. 
I  mean,  I  don't  know  whether  I'm  coming  out  something 
you'll  like  or  not  like.  How  can  a  man  be  sure  what's  in 
him?  Shall  I  wake  up  some  time  and  know,  because  I've 
been  a  thief,  I  ought  never  to  think  of  anything  now  but 
money  —  paying  back,  cent  for  cent,  or  cents  for  dollars, 
what  I  lost?  I  don't  know.  Or  shall  I  think  I'm  right 
in  not  doing  anything  spectacular  and  plodding  along  here 
and  working  for  the  town?  I  don't  know  that.  One 
thing  I  know  —  you.  If  I  said  I  loved  you  it  wouldn't  be 
a  millionth  part  of  what  I  do.  I'm  founded  on  you.  I'm 
rooted  in  you.  There !  that's  enough.  Stop  me.  That's 
the  thing  I  wasn't  going  to  do." 

They  were  at  their  own  gate.     They  halted  there. 

"  You'd  better  go  down  and  find  Anne  and  Farvie," 
said  Lydia. 

She  stood  in  the  light  from  the  lamp  and  he  looked  full 
at  her.  This  was  a  Lydia  he  meant  never  to  call  out  from 
her  maiden  veiling  after  to-night  until  the  day  when  he 
could  summon  her  for  open  vows  and  unstinted  cherishing 
He  wanted  to  learn  her  face  by  heart.  How  was  her 
brave  soul  answering  him  ?  The  child  face,  sweet  in  every 


THE  PRISONER  471 

tint  and  line  of  it,  turned  to  him  in  an  unhesitating  re 
sponse.  It  was  the  garden  of  love,  and,  too,  a  pure  unhin 
dered  happiness. 

"  I'm  going  in,"  said  Lydia,  "  to  get  something  ready 
for  them  to  eat  —  Farvie  and  Anne.  For  us,  too." 

She  took  a  little  run  away  from  him,  and  he  watched 
her  light  figure  until  the  shrubbery  hid  her.  At  the  door, 
it  must  have  been,  she  gave  a  clear  call.  Jeff  answered 
the  call,  and  then  went  on  to  find  his  father  and  Anne.  He 
knew  he  should  not  see  just  the  Lydia  that  had  run  away 
from  him  until  the  day  she  came  back  again,  into  his 
arms. 


THE    END 


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